21:22Sabri Suby · Essay
17 Years Of Brutally Honest Business Advice in 21 Mins
Seven hard-won truths from building a $7.8B-revenue agency over 17 years.
June 26thThe argument in one line.
Discipline based calendar systems, not motivation, are what let a founder scale a business past $10 billion in sales while protecting health, sleep, and family time.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A founder or agency owner past the survival stage who has a team but still feels like the business runs them.
- Someone whose daily calendar gets built around whatever feels urgent instead of what actually produces revenue.
- A solo operator scaling past six or seven figures who hasn't yet protected sleep, health, or family time from the business.
SKIP IF…
- You're pre revenue and still validating an offer. These systems assume money is already coming in.
- You already run a protected money block, batch days, and a gatekeeper for your calendar.
The full version, fast.
Suby argues that businesses stay small not from lack of effort but from unprotected time, and lays out eight calendar level systems he says carried his agency to $10.2 billion in sales. Early on, block off money hours and treat every non revenue task as theft. Once you hire, batch admin into two office days and guard the rest. Compress meetings after lunch, kill trivial daily decisions, hit a step count, protect sleep with a bedtime instead of an alarm, and schedule recreation with the same rigor as a sales call. The last and hardest system: make 'no' the default answer, and hire an assistant to enforce it.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:29
01 · Cold open
The $10.2 billion claim and the promise of eight systems.
00:29 – 03:24
02 · System 1: Money Hours
Block off a protected early window for revenue producing work only, no admin allowed.
03:24 – 06:49
03 · System 2: Batch Days
Push all meetings and admin onto two fixed days so the rest of the week stays deep work only.
06:49 – 09:15
04 · System 3: No Meetings Before Lunch
Stack every meeting into the afternoon and cut stated meeting lengths in half.
09:15 – 11:12
05 · System 4: Kill The Worthless Decisions
Standardize repeatable choices, like wardrobe and meals, once, so they never cost mental bandwidth again.
11:12 – 14:07
06 · System 5: 10,000 Steps A Day
Treat energy and health as the master system that everything else depends on.
14:07 – 17:03
07 · System 6: Go-To-Bed Alarm
Set the alarm for bedtime instead of wake time to protect sleep quality.
17:03 – 19:30
08 · System 7: Book In The Fun
Schedule recreational and family time as recurring, protected calendar events.
19:30 – 23:23
09 · System 8: Make No Your Default
Default every inbound request to no and route all requests through a single gatekeeper.
23:23 – 23:48
10 · Close
Discipline over motivation, plus a like/subscribe close and a related video pointer.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- If you don't have money coming in, you don't have a business, you have a hobby.
- 80 percent of your time in the early stage of a business should go to revenue producing activity, not admin.
- Batching activities by theme across two office days and several deep work days gets more done in three days than most people manage in three weeks.
- Compressing a meeting's stated length in half, and stacking all meetings after lunch, protects the whole first half of the day for money making work.
- Every decision you don't automate, like what to wear or what to eat, burns the same limited mental bandwidth you need for business decisions.
- Whoever has the most energy makes the most money, because all business problems are personal problems wearing a business costume.
- Setting a go to bed alarm, not a wake up alarm, is the actual lever on sleep quality and next day decision quality.
- Scheduling recreational time with the same rigor as a sales call is what prevents burnout on a business that's a marathon, not a sprint.
- Making 'no' the default answer to every inbound request, then hiring someone to enforce it, is what protects a founder's time once a team exists.
- A one page list of rules of engagement, shared with the whole team, cuts off inbound interruptions before they ever reach the founder.
Eight calendar rules for a business that doesn't run you.
TIME SYSTEMS
Across eight systems, from a protected money block to a default answer of no, the same pattern holds: nothing meaningful runs on motivation, every hour and every decision has to be assigned in advance or someone else's priorities will consume it.
02System 1: Money Hours
- A business isn't real until money is coming in on its own; time spent on anything else early on is theft from the one activity that matters.
- Protecting a two to three hour block for revenue producing work only, with no admin allowed, is what separates a business from a job you built for yourself.
- Cold calling or outreach works better in a protected early block because almost no one else is trying to reach you at 6 or 7am.
03System 2: Batch Days
- Grouping every meeting, admin task, and interruption onto two fixed days a week protects the other three or four for uninterrupted, high value work.
- Switching between shallow admin and deep work throughout the week is what kills output, not the total hours worked.
- Assigning each remaining weekday a single theme, like writing, planning, or expansion, removes the friction of deciding what to work on and lets focus compound.
04System 3: No Meetings Before Lunch
- Stacking every meeting into the afternoon protects the entire first half of the day, when energy and focus are highest, for revenue work.
- Cutting a stated meeting length in half by default, and enforcing it, makes meetings run tighter without anyone objecting.
- Ending every meeting by assigning a clear owner and deadline turns a discussion into forward progress instead of a recap nobody acts on.
05System 4: Kill The Worthless Decisions
- Every trivial daily decision, like what to wear or what to eat, draws on the same limited mental capacity used for real business decisions.
- Standardizing repeatable choices once, a uniform, a rotating meal plan, a fixed workout schedule, removes hundreds of small decisions a week permanently.
- The goal isn't sameness for its own sake, it's freeing mental bandwidth for the decisions that actually move the business.
06System 5: 10,000 Steps A Day
- Energy is treated as the master system underneath every other system, because output caps out at whatever capacity a founder's health allows.
- A non-negotiable, fixed workout schedule works better than a flexible one, since 'whenever I have time' rarely survives a busy week.
- A short walk after eating is used deliberately to avoid an energy crash, not just as general health advice.
07System 6: Go-To-Bed Alarm
- Setting an alarm for bedtime, not wake time, is the actual lever, since sleep quality is what determines decision quality the next day.
- Working backward from a target wake time to a consistent bedtime, rather than forcing an early alarm, produces more natural, higher quality sleep.
- A consistent nightly wind down routine trains the body to fall asleep at the same time, which compounds into sharper daily decisions.
08System 7: Book In The Fun
- Personal and recreational time gets scheduled as fixed, recurring calendar events, given the same protection as a sales call, not left to whatever time is left over.
- Without standing personal commitments on the calendar, work expands to fill every open slot by default.
- Treating the business as a marathon, not a sprint, means protecting recovery time is what allows someone to stay in the game long enough for compounding to matter.
09System 8: Make No Your Default
- Setting the default answer to every new request to no, instead of maybe or let me check, prevents the calendar from filling with other people's priorities.
- A single gatekeeper who filters every request against a written set of priorities removes the need to personally evaluate each new ask.
- A written, one page set of rules for what counts as urgent lets a team self filter requests instead of escalating everything upward.
Terms worth knowing.
- Money hours
- A block of the day, usually early morning, reserved only for activities that directly bring in revenue, with no admin allowed.
- Batch days
- Fixed days, Mondays and Fridays in Suby's schedule, set aside entirely for meetings and admin so the rest of the week stays uninterrupted for deep work.
- Draining the shallows
- Suby's term for clearing all the low value but necessary admin work in one concentrated block instead of letting it interrupt deep work all week.
- Professional fixer
- Suby's term for a personal assistant whose sole job is to filter every inbound request for his time before it reaches him.
Things they pointed at.
16:04toolAura Ring / Whoop Band (sleep tracking)
15:43toolSleep animal chronotype quiz (dolphin/bear/wolf)
Lines you could clip.
00:03
“I've done over 10.2 billion dollars in sales across a thousand different niches”
03:24
“I started my business king kong from my bedroom with nothing more than 50 and an old computer that my girlfriend bought me and i hustled and cold called and pulled myself up from my bootstraps and got myself a seat as an investor on shark tank”
05:50
“this is like the swamp that most people end up in”
19:59
“every single one of these open lines of communication is like death by a thousand cuts”
20:56
“is this going to get me closer to the big priorities in my life... if whoever these requests are coming for aren't a priority, they're not in the calendar, then the default has to be no”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogy
I've done over 10 .2 billion dollars in sales across a thousand different niches and these are the eight systems that made it all possible starting with system number one when you're just getting started there is only one thing that matters and that is ringing the cash register if you don't have money coming in if you don't have clients you don't have customers then you do not have a business you simply have a hobby and typically what happens when you start a business is that you are the one that is doing all of the work you're doing the sales you're doing the fulfillment you're doing procurement you're doing the accounts you're doing absolutely everything in your business and then it doesn't take long for you to start to get bogged down in the day -to -day of the business and the only way to get out of this is by playing offense and not playing defense so what do i mean by that well you need to set up a structure and a system in your life that allows you to create time that you can go out there and you can actually move the money needle so when i started my business i'll never forget i wrote down okay you're gonna wake up at five a .m and so from
the very next day, I started waking up at 5am. I would wake up, either go for a run or get a lift in straight out of the gate because there was no excuses to not get it in. There's always things that pop up when you're running a business as unexpected emergencies.
And I can sit down at my computer by say 7am and there's no one bothering you at that time. There's very few people that are up actually working at 6 or 7am in the morning. You can rip through all of the admin, all the emails, everything that it is that you need to do.
And I always make sure 100 % that I was on the telephone by no later than 9 a .m. every single day cold calling businesses and bringing that cash in because when I was just getting started I was hunting by day and farming by night there's only certain hours in the day that I can actually cold call people and people are gonna be by a phone and I want to make sure that 100 % that I am NOT using that very valuable time to actually bring in money to the business so here's how you can specifically apply this system to your own life want to think what are the money hours in your work day and you want to block them out if you're doing creative work or you're doing sales calls or you're creating content there is going to be a pocket of time in the day that you have the most energy the most mental bandwidth to actually get it done but the key here is it has to be something that moves the money needle in your business it has to be getting attention or converting that attention and actually bringing in customers and you need to make sure that 80 of your time in the beginning is spent on revenue
producing activities. Otherwise, all you're going to do is build a job for yourself and not a business. I want you to open up your calendar and block in a three hour money block for tomorrow.
I don't care if it's 8am to 11, whatever it is, block it out right now. And in that time, the only thing that you're allowed to do is ask yourself the question, what is it that I can do right now to bring in more money in my business? Whether it's follow up with old leads, it's create videos, send out a text message to your whole list, come up with some type of offer, you are absolutely 100 % not allowed to do one tiny little piece of admin.
Every activity must be about bringing in money. And that is system number one, money hours. Implement this system and the money will start flowing in and then you're gonna start hiring people.
And the moment that you do that, another enemy is going to show up. And this one enemy, this is the one thing that keeps most businesses small and it is a much bigger threat than any other competitor. not telling you any of these systems from theory i started my business king kong from my bedroom with nothing more than 50 and an old computer that my girlfriend bought me and i hustled and cold called and pulled myself up from my bootstraps and got myself a seat as an investor on shark tank which brings us to system number two so now that you've got money coming in and you're focusing on ringing that cash register as much as you can you're gonna start hiring people and every single person that you hire is going to be like a they're going to be asking you lots and lots of questions and then all of those questions they're going to slowly leech in and start ripping back some of that money time from you because it will always be like hey do you got a minute do you have a minute for me i've just got a quick question and every single one of these questions it interrupts the money and it breaks you out of your flow state and it brings your attention to something that is typically going to be admin and these things they appear to be urgent but they are not important and they distract you from making money
So the way that I avoid this is I batch certain activities to certain tasks and I have office hours that people are allowed to ask me questions because otherwise the business is gonna burn to the ground if people can't ask you questions anyway. So what I like to do is I like to do all of my meetings, all of my interviews, all of the logistic day -to -day admin that is required to run any business on Mondays and on Fridays.
There's maximum of three days that somebody can go without contacting me and I rip through all of those things need to get done on a monday all the meetings all of that kind of stuff so then when tuesday wednesday and thursday comes around they are my deep work days and the mondays and the fridays that is what we call draining the shallows it's all the shallow work that is necessary and it must get done but it does not move the money needle it's very difficult to switch between those tasks so what you want to do is batch those activities and it's something that i learned early on and it serves me incredibly well so you can just completely lock in go very very deep for the entire day on that task and you get so much more done in trying to switch between these different activities and i like to group each day into one theme tuesday might be writing all of the ads wednesday might be updating course content or coming up with incentive structures for your employees and then thursday might be looking at different expansion plans where you're moving into different geographies or different initiatives different products or services that you want to roll out to further grow the business and so you must absolutely guard your
time otherwise all the people that you hire all the marketplace is just going to eat it up day by day and then you get sucked into operating the business and not growing the business and this is like so the way that you can specifically apply this in your own business and life right now is to look at your calendar and lock in at least two theme days per week where you are only allowed to go deep on one specific theme and that is system number two batch days.
And if you protect your days like that, then you are going to get more done in three days than most people do in three weeks. However, even if you do this, I can bet you that there is still one little evil critter that is going to be eating up a lot of valuable time in your day. If you're getting value out of this and you want more of that deep source, then make sure that you are subscribed because we are dropping multiple videos per week, which brings us to system number three.
So now we've got money coming in. We've got a team. We're really guarding our hours and you find yourself sitting in meeting after meeting after meeting.
First of all, you need to be extremely ruthless with what you say yes to and what you say no to. But even once you do that, you are going to have meetings. And here's the hack that I have found.
One, you want to have all of your meetings after lunch. You want to stack all those meetings back to back at the second half of the day. Immediately drop whatever they are asking for in half.
And you say, we just need to run a more efficient meeting. And therefore a 30 minute meeting turns into a 15 minute meeting or a one hour meeting turns into a 30 minute meeting.
And when you compress that time on them and you put a constraint around your time, you'll be surprised that those meetings just run a lot more efficiently. It does make the last half of the day pretty hectic, but what it does is it carves out the first whole half of the day for those golden hours of more money making activities.
You're not sitting in meetings just yapping about things. As a result of doing that, you're going to start to pack on the pounds and you're going to let your health go by the wayside. And the only way hack around doing so is to make sure that you're doing two things at the same time and a great way to do that is to have all of your virtual meetings out when you are walking around you whip up your phone i do meetings with billionaires venture capitalists i don't give a fuck who it is i'm gonna make sure that if i have a virtual meeting that i am definitely walking i cannot stand it when i jump into a meeting and everyone is just yapping for the first five ten minutes and oh who's this and they're talking about the weekend it's like when you jump into a meeting it's meeting time you've got all of these pages people that are in a meeting you're paying for that you're paying for it with your time and then all of your team members time so you need to run it sharp and effective the number one hack for doing so is compressing the time and having a set agenda and then ending every single meeting with a who what is the action that it is they're going to be doing and when is it going to be done and so you're not just getting together in a room of people and having a little bit of a chit chat and then you're walking out and then they're just sending some ai summary of the meeting and then no one knows what it is that they need to do every single meeting should progress
the company forward. Here's how to apply this system to your own business and life right now. Open up your calendar and look at all the reoccurring or standing meetings that you have every single week that happen before lunchtime and just move them.
Drag those little puppies to the afternoon, get those people to accept it. And that is system number three. Absolutely no meetings before lunch.
Do that and your best hours will stop being robbed from you before lunch. However, this next point is going to sound a little bit weird, but it's the exact reason why have worn the same thing every day for 10 years when you're running a business you're going to be making hundreds if not thousands of decisions every single week and you only have so much mental ram that you can associate to making those decisions so the last thing that you want to be doing is using that very precious ram to basically make trivial decisions like what are you going to wear or what are you going to eat so you want to think about all of the decisions that you have to make every single day you want to put a lot of scrutiny into them and then you want make them once so you do not need to make them every single day where you put your keys where you put your phone when you charge it my approach to doing this is whenever i'm going to be doing something every single day like wearing a t -shirt i will split test 10 different t -shirts i will legitimately go and buy 10 t -shirts i'll find all of the styles of black t -shirts that i think that i like and i will trial them all out until i find the final lotion boss of that t -shirt and then i'll just go and i'll buy 30 of them and so when i look in my cupboard all i've got
is the one T -shirt that I wear every single day. Same thing for shoes, same thing for jeans. Same thing with meals.
In my house, we have a rolling 14 -day menu. We have all the dishes that we're gonna be eating every two weeks. You'll be surprised.
You don't need a huge variety of meals. If you plan out like a 14 -day menu, it never feels like you're eating the same food, but you don't need to think about it in terms of when you go and work out, you have a very regimented lifting schedule where you know what your lifting days are gonna look like. so you don't need to go in there and go, what's sore today?
What isn't sore? So this is what I want you to do right now. I want you to sit down and I want you to list out all the repetitive things that you do every single day and every single week so that you just cut all your daily decisions to zero.
Now you don't need to be like homey and just wear the same black shit every single day either you don't want to, but it might be that you have three different styles of outfits that it is that you wear and you do not need to decide that every single day. And that is system number four, kill the. worthless decisions so all these systems are good for actually making money but what you're gonna find is once you do start making a little bit of money your business is still gonna be this time -hungry vampire that's gonna suck up all your time and then what typically happens is for most business owners in the first one to three years they start to put on weight because they have neglected their health and this next system helps you to avoid this and look this might sound like it's wrong for this video but it is absolutely not because whoever has the most energy makes the most money and you can only push out into the marketplace what you have within yourself because all business problems are simply personal problems masquerading as business problems and health is the one master system that sits under all your other systems to the person that is poor they want a thousand things but the person that is rich they want one thing and that is their health so one thing speaking from experience that I wish that I would have learned early is that I had to prioritize my health and so
So what I would do now that I was starting over and it's a system that I've built into my own business is you must get a lift in or do some physical activity every single day. For me, I lift three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. But on all of those other days, I'm making sure that I am doing some type of activity in my business.
And I can tell you right now that by getting in shape, lifting, having more energy, I have certainly made a lot more money. So the way that you can apply this into your own business is that you must have absolutely absolutely non -negotiable days that you exercise you cannot have a fluid schedule you're like oh i work out when i get time hell no that is never gonna happen so what you do is you must have a time and a day that you lift every single day that is non -flexible and even when you don't feel like it you still get it done then another hack that i want you to do is after eating that you go for a walk every single day it's been scientifically shown that if you walk after you eat it helps curb that insulin spike that you get after you eat that you want to crash and just do nothing for the rest of the day it allows you to get outside get natural sunlight in your eyes it re -energizes you and also you do some of your best thinking when you're walking so the system that i do is i lift early morning before all the chaos in my life begins and then no matter what i'm getting 10 000 steps as a minimum usually it's 15 000 and the only way that i do that is one walking around in the gym in between sets and two making sure that i get at least a
a one hour walk at lunchtime every single day. The way that you can apply this to your own life is to look at your workout schedule right now, lock that in on the calendar. And for me, what's on the calendar is what gets done.
And that is system number five, at least 10 ,000 steps a day. So once you get your energy right, everything else downstream from that becomes easier. However, there is also gonna be another thing that you really need to optimize that is gonna critically affect the quality of decisions that you make and how much money that you make.
And that's what this next system is all about. One of the most common questions that a lot of business owners think about, they ask other business owners about is how many hours a week do you work? And once you start looking at your time, you're gonna start to see that there's a big chunk of your time every day that goes to sleep.
And then so the next question is what time do you wake up? And everybody has like a wake up time. They set their alarm for what time they need to wake up in the morning.
However, what I have found is what's far more important to set an alarm for what time that you should go to bed. You don't want to figure out what time that it is that you need to wake up.
You want to first figure out, okay, when do I ideally want to start my day? And then you want to keep on moving what time that you go to bed earlier and earlier and earlier until you naturally wake up at that time. If you look at super successful people like Jeff Bezos, he prioritizes his sleep like no other.
And the reason for that is the higher that you get up in business, you go from making hundreds if not thousands of decisions a month And then you need to make three quality decisions a year. And the thing that determines the quality of those decisions is usually how well rested that you are.
The sweet spot is typically between seven and eight hours. The other thing that I would recommend doing is seeing what type of sleep type you are. They have like a dolphin and a bear and a wolf.
Just type it in sleep animal and it will tell you what type of person that you are. And then you can start to optimize your schedule around that. Because you might be thinking, hey, I can just pound a couple more coffees.
it's really not that bad i don't need much sleep you're a shell of a person and then your kids see you and they get the very very worst so you gotta prioritize your sleep because it's a lot more than just grinding through the day it's being able to not just lie on the couch when you get home and still have energy for the people that rely on you so the way that you can apply this system into your own life is to set a go to sleep time muck around with it see what time that you naturally end up waking up and then you want to bring that forward or bring it back depending on where it is that you're waking up and how rested you are i highly recommend getting something like the aura ring or the whoop band to also measure the quality of your sleep and running some little split tests around herbal tea sauna going for a walk in the evening having magnesium glycinate build in a nighttime routine that it is you have everyone obsesses over morning routines and earthing and sunlight and all that kind of stuff you need to set a sleep routine as well of like how do you unplug how do you reset to completely unwind from
the day, what you're going to find is you're going to get the best sleep when you basically tell your body that I go to sleep at the same time every single night. And that is system number six, have a go to bed alarm. Sort out your sleep and your decisions are going to get sharper overnight.
But one thing that is very, very important is the more that you focused on your sleep and productivity and how much money that you're making, your calendar is going to start to get full, very, very full with everything that is work. But don't lose sight of why you started your business in the first place which is to live your life so most business owners are very militant when it comes to booking in their time and sorting out the things that are a priority in their business to get done they schedule everything down they've got reoccurring meetings and everything is typically in the calendar however when it comes to their personal life that all just goes by the wayside and they don't protect their own recreational time with the same rigor and the same intensity that they do running meetings or doing quarterly reports and what i would suggest that you do is to treat your personal life as important as your business life because if you leave it to chance and if you don't have reoccurring standing meetings for fun and recreational things then your entire calendar just fills up with work and you become a robot because business is a marathon it is not a sprint if you look at most successful business owners due to compounding interest make the most of their monies in the latter years of their life and so that means you're gonna have to be in the arena playing this game for a long period of time and the only way that you can do this
if you don't burn out so the system that has worked very well for me is that i book in fun and recreational time in my calendar like i book in sales calls and so all the activities that i'm doing from saunering to walking to hanging out my wife date night to time with my kids to taking them to frozen yogurt it is all booked in on the calendar and it gets done and if i have got recreational time in there i don't cancel that i treat it with the same respect as i do a very important meeting because I know that unless I do these things, then I'm not going to have the energy to go out there in the marketplace and be an absolute maniac and push and shove and grind and get everything that it is that I want.
Here's how to apply this system to your own life. What I want you to do right now is to fire up that good old Google calendar once again, look at your schedule and I want you to plan at least three things as a standing meeting that are on your calendar every week. It might be date night, it might be a walk with your dog, it might be yoga session i don't care what it is just book it in make it a reoccurring event that happens every single week or every single fortnight which is system number seven book in the fun build in these circuit breakers and you'll be still standing while everyone else that has been sprinting simply falls flat even if you're doing everything right if you fail to implement this last system then everything else will fail because this last system is what makes everything possible this This brings us to the eighth and final system.
Even after implementing all of these systems, the more that you grow, the higher that you get up the mountain, the less time you have. And you're gonna have more people working for you. Hopefully your family is growing.
And basically what happens as a result of that is you are gonna have lots of requests for your time, both personally and professionally. And most people, their default answer is yes, or maybe, or let me see, or let me look at the calendar. And every single one of these open lines of communication is like .
And the way to avoid this is to make your default to every answer, no. I know it sounds harsh. However, being clear is being kind.
And so for me in my life, my friends know, like don't try and book in a evening dinner with me at 8 p .m. at night. It's just not going to happen.
So I just set up these defaults of no to everything. When something comes my way, I simply run it through a framework of, is this going to get me closer to the big priorities in my life? And typically the answer to that is no.
If whoever these requests are coming for aren't a priority, they're not in the calendar, then the default has to be no. But even if your default is no, there is still going to be lots of lines of communication that are going to people coming in with inbound asking for requests. And so the way that I have found to protect my time is by having a crucial hire that I call a professional fixer, also known as an assistant.
And all lines of communication must come through that person. As you build a company and you build a team and you're gonna have multiple teams in your business, and then there's gonna be multiple division heads of the people that are then running those teams, they're gonna feel like that they can come directly to you. And the more direct reports that you have, the more inbound that you have, and then you just can't get to the work that actually matters.
So when you hire a personal assistant, the first system that you set up for them is every, single piece of request for my time or inbound or anything goes through you i don't even have a work phone i tell her straight up your one job is to keep the they're going to be rattling that gate trying to get in they're going to come to you with requests that seem urgent but aren't urgent and so then you run them through the framework of can this wait till friday or can it wait till monday and what i do is i empower her to make those decisions i am very very clear these my priorities right now these are the things that i'm working on if it's urgent cannot wait to monday and friday or is it worthy of my time in the first place so that i am offloading that mental ram to her to make those decisions she already has the rules of engagement that are set by me and that immediately is the first line of defense cuts down a huge amount of inbound requests that i get so the way that you can apply this right now in your own business and life is to write a one pager that you share
with all of your team and you're like these are the days that i do meetings these are the office hours a non -irreversible thing that must get sorted right now this is kind of how it works and you give them those rules for engagement so they are also clear because you can't expect for them not to come to you with all these things if you haven't been cleared about them with how you operate then you need to tell them what is code red what can they interrupt your normal schedule for what does that look like then open up chat gpt or claude and say hey this this is the priorities, this is how I manage my time, please craft me an email to send to all of my managers that gives them the rules of engagement and makes everything clear and then ask everybody to reply that they acknowledge it, they've received it and they understand it or to come back to you with any questions.
And that is system number eight, make know your default. Now, none of these systems rely on motivation, they rely on discipline. If you're running your business based on if you feel motivated or not, you're never gonna make it very far a lot of the things that you need to do day to day that you don't want to do, but your discipline must force you to do them.
And the best way to do that is to have these eight systems implemented in your life that you run like clockwork. And then you just run your life using these eight master systems. And if you enjoyed this video, then you'll like this one that I put together on brutally honest advice to grow your business fast.
Like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Sabri Suby opens with the number built to hold your attention: $10.2 billion in sales, starting from a $50 bedroom setup. What follows is the actual calendar architecture behind it, eight named systems for protecting revenue producing time from everything that wants to eat it.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:00list
The 8 Master Systems
- Money Hours
- Batch Days
- No Meetings Before Lunch
- Kill The Worthless Decisions
- 10,000 Steps A Day
- Go-To-Bed Alarm
- Book In The Fun
- Make No Your Default
A stacked set of calendar and decision rules, roughly in the order a growing business needs them: protect revenue time first, then protect focus, then protect health, then protect the calendar itself from other people's requests.
Steal forany founder or team lead trying to build calendar discipline as the business scales
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
23:23subscribe
“if you enjoyed this video, then you'll like this one that I put together on brutally honest advice to grow your business fast. Like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.”
Soft cross promo into a related video, paired with a standard like and subscribe ask, delivered in the closing seconds right after the eighth system wraps.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
