The Bottleneck of Your Potential is You: how I coached 100+ high achievers to do more in less hours.

You can have ambition, discipline, and a packed schedule and still feel strangely stuck. That’s usually not a talent problem. It’s a capacity problem, and the hard truth is that the bottleneck is often us. We talk about how leaders hit a ceiling when they keep doing tasks that belonged to an earlier version of their life, and why real growth starts when you stop trying to cram more into the same 24 hours. We dig into the leadership skill that separates the people who keep evolving from the p...

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  Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your upgrade to the next level of you, next version, the best possible self or as close to that as possible. I'm a certified master of health, sleep, stress management, self-actualization, executive coach, fitness, nutrition, did I mention that? All that to say, guys, I am a huge fan of human potential, of doing, looking, feeling, living our best possible self as much as possible.

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  Getting down to the level of small daily practices, the single most important unit of any growth and improvement, like no matter how far you want to go in life, how much you want to grow as a person, it all starts with a single unit of repeatable actions, repeatable habits, some sort of practice that will build a skill that you need to build in order to create the next version of you and let results you want be the logical side effect.

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  All that being said, guys, today we are talking about how to not become the bottleneck in this process of growing into the best possible self, creating the most possible impact through your work or how you show up for life, for relationships, for other people, how to not become your own bottleneck, specifically in bottleneck in how much time you have, because no matter how you slice it, the ultimate bottleneck in this life is how we use our time. Every single person on this planet gets 24 hours a day to distribute, to invest, to

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  use for different pursuits. And if you are trying to do more and more and more and have longer and longer to-do list, like there is a limit to that. And sooner or later, you'll come to the conclusion, in order for you to grow somewhere, to create more, to build more, to impact more, you need to first figure out how to do less and how to create more time and how to create more energy, how to create more resourcefulness and capability, in order for you to deliver more with the same exact hours you're gonna have till the rest of your life.

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  And the best leaders, guys, I coached a lot of high achievers, a lot, a lot of them over the years, hundreds.

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  And what I learned is that the best leaders, and by the best, I mean the ones who just keep growing till basically the day they die. I am yet to have a client who died while we were coaching, going through the coaching together. But what I learned, also observing other leaders I admired in all possible different domains of human achievement, is that the ones who just again keep growing, and I asked a couple of leaders in their nineties, like, "What's your secret? How do you still are so active and still accomplishing, getting after it?" And what I learned is that the fundamental ability, or you might even say talent that

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  they have, or approach to life and leadership and work, is that they learned how to replace systems that worked for their past level, their previous level. They learned how to rebuild those, destroy, crush, remove those outdated systems to build new systems, so then the next level, the next version of them can become reality. And it first starts with firing themselves, firing you as a leader, firing you as you from a lot of jobs that you used to do, outsourcing them, delegating, automating to

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  technology, or simply saying, "I'm no longer doing this." So then you create more time, you create more energy, you create more space to take on the next level. You know, guys, I've coached quite a few professional athletes, and they are actually really, really amazing compared to a lot of leaders and entrepreneurs and just high achievers in different domains. Athletes are really good at understanding, "Hey, yeah, I might, I'm capable of cooking my own meals, or taking care of my gear, or booking my own travel, but I'm not gonna

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  do that because the next level of my achievement requires me to dedicate more time to either training or recovery, and I can't dedicate it if I'm still doing all the other stuff, like cooking, which is not essential to my pursuit, to my mastery, to my greatness as an athlete, my main sort of area of mastery." So athletes are really good at it. And a lot of leaders need to learn this in our coaching. They come to the coaching thinking that I'm gonna sprinkle some magic on them, and that's how they're gonna be able to squeeze more things into the hours they have.

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  And very often, I need to walk them through gently but persistently through the process of firing themselves from all the jobs and responsibilities that they believe they gotta do no matter what, dropping quite a few balls in order to free up some hand space, to juggle the right balls, not all of the balls. And what am I talking about here? Let me start with my personal example and how I almost became my own bottleneck. And for a while, I couldn't see it, like, and now I see, that is why you've been stuck at the same level. You never took the courage to build new systems, to create capacity, to remove, eliminate

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  first, so then you could build the next level of your business and your career, so then you could help more clients and help them better. The bottleneck is you, right, guys? We're looking for the enemy and the enemy is us. I don't remember who said that, but I thought it was brilliant. "The best leaders don't do more, they fire themselves faster." Guys, I want to repeat this, "The best leaders don't do more, the greatest people you admire, they don't do more, they fire themselves faster." What do I mean by that?

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  I was, like yesterday, I was sitting at my desk, sending out a couple of invoices and a couple of receipts, and I thought to myself, "Thanks, God, this is gonna be the last week I'm doing this, this task. I'm not, there is no way I'm gonna be like some of my clients, becoming my own bottleneck. Damn, I coach people out of this misery, there is no way I'm repeating this mistake. I just saw it so clearly, like, these are the things that are stealing my time, that I can reinvest into becoming the greatest coach I can be, so I can serve my clients in the best possible way, so they can achieve more positive impact.

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  I'm not serving anyone by doing the tasks that are, that don't add any value to anyone's life, and in fact, they are holding me back from serving people better and doing my job better and helping myself to, to grow, to do better and to deliver more impact." But anyhow, so that's the conversation I was having in my head about, like, there is no way I'm gonna be, be continuing to be my own bottleneck. I just, I sent my last invoice, my last receipt. On Monday, I scheduled the onboarding of my first ever virtual assistant, and my brain is already in pleasant anticipation.

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  No more boring tasks, tasks that add no value to my work, that don't improve my skills or the value I deliver to clients, tasks that I don't enjoy.

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  Richard Koch, popular economist, quite successful author, entrepreneur, popularized the 80/20 Pareto Principle, getting the most out of the two vital 20% that deliver the best or the most results. So Richard Koch writes about the people who achieve a lot without stress or burnout. "They seem to have a specific type of brain." I would argue that's everyone's brains, but we put in our way these obstacles to not allow the brain to do its best job. So the type of brain that people who achieve a lot without stress or burnout is intelligent and lazy.

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  Those brains learn how to add value in the unique way that gives the most return of investment. Then they figure out how to do less and less of the work they don't want to do, don't enjoy, that doesn't add any value. They figure out really fast how to fire themselves out of anything that is not their core value proposition, that they don't enjoy, that they're not the best at, like sending invoices. I've coached about 100-plus overcommitted entrepreneurs and executives out of one curse of the high achiever, becoming their own bottleneck.

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  "You keep doing tasks that you outgrew a long time ago." Why? Because you can?

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  Because you are legitimately good and great at a lot of those tasks, better than a lot of people? But here is the catch. While you're defending you need to do it all by yourself, trying to juggle all of the balls, you have less and less time, energy and capacity to invest in the next level of you, of your growth, of your potential, of your impact.

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  Time is limited, again, 24 hours, not extendable, not transferable, you're not gonna be making more of hours in the day.

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  So it's your energy, guys, there is a limit on your energy as well. There is only so much that caffeine can carry you through.

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  What if the thing that that's another, you know, really, really good question? Even the thing that you're best at right now, what if this is the same thing that's keeping you small, keeping you from building something bigger and you evolving version of you? The way out is the one that took people like Richard Branson and Tony Robbins from one successful company to the next. You sometimes look at them like you wonder how on earth do they have 100 companies? How on earth do they do all of that? And then flying, I don't know, jumping out of airplanes, traveling the world, doing all these crazy adventures,

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  going on different missions to help even more people to save the world, whether that's, you know, Tony Robbins feeding more and more people who are still hungry or going on some rescue missions or Richard Branson doing all his crazy stunts. Like, how on earth do they do that with the same 24 hours? Most of them, they sleep also, they're not robots. Continuously delegate. Fire yourself out of every job that doesn't need to be done by you, even when you think you're great at it, maybe even the best at it. So you can go and figure out your next thing. It's the same as professional athletes have coached.

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  It's not like they can't cook their own food. They have chefs because the next level needs their time that they, I don't know, could be cooking for something more essential to their greatness, their impact, their potential. Burned out entrepreneurs, ambitious moms and overcommitted executives all learn this eventually. Some learn it in time, some learn it in a hospital, some stay stuck on the same level forever, wondering how on earth somebody else does more and better. The faster you want to move as a leader, the faster

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  you want to evolve, the faster and better you need to get at building systems and delegating everything that isn't essential to your growth and leadership. That's how you accomplish more in the same hours, not by sleeping less and wrecking your health. That is unsustainable and it tracks the very greatness that you're trying to grow and protect. And I was lucky enough to become a vivid reader and come across all the great works by people like Dan Martel, a very successful entrepreneur and an author of Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom and Build Your Empire. In this book, one of the really cool

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  frameworks for growing your impact and creating more time to do so, Framework Drip Matrix. Drip Matrix. Delegate, Replace, Invest, Product or Delegation Replacement Investment Production is a better wording for it. And I'm at the level D, the first one. So D delegation, the drip matrix, that's the gist of it. D delegation. You can find more details either by asking your AI, Drip Matrix, Dan Martel, Buy Back Your Time, or checking out my blog post that is linked in the show notes, or WhatsApping me, which you can also do using the link

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  in the show notes, drop me a message, Drip Matrix. Right? So D, delegation. Drains you plus makes you no money. Admin billing, invoicing, routine email scheduling, travel arrangements. Get rid of this first. Hand it to virtual assistant and automation tools, AI, low cost hire. Stop spending owner level time on cheap tasks. Guy, would you hire a marketing director at 100 plus an hour to clean windows? Probably not. Well, you're kind of doing it with yourself, hiring yourself for all this low effort, low pay jobs that

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  you had grew a long time ago. Drip Matrix, D delegation. R, replacement. Drains you plus make you money. Those tasks are initial sales, marketing execution, onboarding, customer support, daily management. Document those tasks and hand it off because these tasks make money and they are harder to let go of, but doing them yourself caps your growth as well. Drip Matrix, I for investment. Those things lights you up and make direct, but make you no money directly. So those are things like exercise, family time, learning,

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  rest, personal health. Those things fuel your growth in all other areas. Protected, this keeps you sharp, prevents burnout and sustains your capacity to lead and perform. That's where sleep leaves, by the way. People, like a lot of leaders don't get it at first. This is where you get your greatness fueled up, charged up. If you don't protect your investment time, sooner or later, you're gonna end up either in a hospital or not ever being able to get to the next level, kind of like an athlete trying to push more and more and more and investing into recovery. That's where you're gonna end up exactly. So investment. And then production. Lights you up plus makes you money. Closing major sales, high level

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  strategy, key partnerships, co-product creation. That is coaching for me, makes me money, makes me the best I can be, helps you to create the most positive impact. That is what I'm not gonna be out delegating and getting AI to do this job because AI will never have one thing, well, at least not to my knowledge or my imagination, but having experience as a human, which often is needed to give the best advice to high achievers on different levels. I'm talking about my coaching, but production. So investment and production, you invest more into them and delegating and getting people to do stuff in low cost,

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  low importance tasks, but also important tasks, the ones that are not in your key zone of genius. You know, sometimes it's sales, sometimes it's marketing. Marketing, those are tasks that require a lot of expertise as well, but is it your expertise? If not, then you need to delegate them as well. So Drip Matrix. AI it, Google it, check it out on my blog linked in the show notes, but check it out. And so I'm at, I'm starting with D this Monday, November 2nd. Long overdue, I'm honest with that. What made the jump for me, guys, a clear priority? Well, a very specific goal to enroll 20 new clients, amazing,

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  high performing clients that I'm absolutely pumped coaching. And I asked an AI agent, Boredy, to help me map out the time that goal would take, 40 plus hours weekly. And I needed enough time, I needed enough time to over deliver great work for my extremely smart and successful clients without compromising my own wellbeing and growth as a coach. And then I asked myself, well, 40 plus hours, geez, it's a lot. Honestly, how can I make this possible? There is no way I, as a certified sleep coach, am gonna be compromising my sleep, like no way on that. Well, I thought to myself, all that back and forth on stuff like invoices and receipts would make it impossible for sure, especially with all

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  of the new clients. It would, in the very time I need to reach my goal, to serve my clients, to become the best possible version of self. I'm not giving up on my dream becoming a super coach because of invoices. So that made it a priority. Setting very clear goal and then brainstorming how I'm actually gonna do it with AI. And also I have another accountability call, which made me realize, hey, I cannot afford to have the same systems pushing towards that goal. But anyhow, either way, you need to invest in creating time, energy and capacity

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  first, then you can make the leap or the gradual pursuit of your next level. And that's what I found in my coaching keeps a lot of really great leaders stuck. The fear of investing first, the fear of letting go the old and firing themselves from a lot of jobs, the fear of losing control, the fear of tearing up old systems to build something new, especially when that new is never a guarantee, right? So that fear keeps you stuck and that fear

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  needs to be fired as well if you want to get to your next level. First, you need to create more time, more energy and capacity. And you can't just, you know, invent it. There's never gonna be more than 24 hours a day. You do need to sleep as a human being, unless until we become half robots or something. You do need more energy and you're already at your capacity. You need to build the reserve first before you can make the leap. So, the question of the day. But before we jump into the question, guys, there is the blog with all of these concepts and the drip matrix with details. The link is in the show notes. Check it out, absolutely free on my Substack. You can also send me a message and I'll send

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  you the link directly. Drip Matrix, Drip Matrix. Send me a WhatsApp and I'm gonna send you the link back and might even give you the image of Drip Matrix if you want to. So WhatsApp me, the link is in the show notes as well. And don't forget to share this podcast episode with this person who is drowning under all of these tasks that they should not be doing a long time ago, right? So share this with that person. It will help me to help more people. Together, we'll change the world, right? So, share this podcast. The question, the question of the day. What's your next level? What is

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  your next level? Whether that's personally, your fitness, your health, your relationships, your business, your career, what's your next level? And what's one system you need to build so you stop being the bottleneck to your own growth? Guys, we were looking for the enemy and the enemy is us. The fear is in the way of letting go of tearing up old before building something new, the fear of firing yourself before hiring you yourself. So what's your next level? And what's one system you need to build so you stop being the bottleneck to your own growth? And maybe what one, one system that you need to let

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  go of that is not aligned, that prevents you from getting to your next level. So what's the system that makes you your own bottleneck? Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. I hope that you'll stop this podcast and really give it a think. What, in what way am I my own bottleneck to my own growth? That being said, have an amazing day further and till next time, keep growing, not becoming your own bottleneck.