Secrets of Millionaires Who Work 40 Hours a Week or Less

I used to think that the only way to get wealthy was to work round the clock. I saw my peers who were insanely busy and thought jam-packed schedules were the only way to the top.

Then, I started to analyze who was really successful and who wasn’t. And I saw that there was no correlation between hours worked and success. In fact, as we discussed in a prior post by Joanne Rogovin, excessive work can wreak havoc on your health.

Research has shown that employees who work 11 hours a day vs. eight have a 67 percent greater risk for developing heart disease. What’s more, 50 percent of employees are less productive due to stress, and 50-hour workweeks or longer result in triple the risk for alcohol abuse problems in life.

Here are the secrets of millionaires who keep stress low by working 40 hours or fewer each week.

They Focus on Their “Invention”

The truth is, your road to success may be bumpy, but the only thing people care about is what you produce. And they don’t pay money for the tasks you check off. They pay for the benefits they receive – the results you produce.

Forty-hour millionaires understand that creating an end product, one that is highly refined, is all that matters. People pay for your “invention” – the groundbreaking thing your business sells.

Don’t be afraid to spend less time on low impact tasks to free up more time to spend on your invention. When you care less about them, you’ll typically find that they fade away. Why? Because they weren’t really that important to begin with.

They Build Systems Up Front

Actually getting the “invention” to the stage of refinement is often the hardest part. After the invention is off the ground and the systems up front are in place, millionaires begin the job of outsourcing.

This means that these millionaires didn’t always work 40 hours or less per week. They worked long and hard at the beginning to build systems. But it’s their systems that provided benefits and value to their customers and allowed them to scale and grow.

Fabienne Fredrickson, for example, developed her business marketing system through her own struggles to attract more clients to her private nutrition practice. Gary Keller led his real estate company through 30 consecutive years of growth and profitability based on narrowing down his ONE thing.

These entrepreneurs and countless others spent their energy and their time building systems, then letting others manage those systems.

They Worry About People

With the extra time not spent worrying on systems and processes, 40-hour millionaires are free to concentrate on more pressing matters: their people.

Successful business owners know that building systems alone is not enough to create a successful company. They invest in finding and leading the right people for their teams, because they know that if they don’t, the alternative could be disaster.

According to a recent Gallup study, 18 percent of American workers are “actively disengaged in their work.” Disengaged employees do poor work. They may even sabotage the company.

Forty-hour millionaires find out what motivates employees and use their work as a vehicle for getting them there. Only then can the owner feel comfortable that the team is working toward a common goal and growing the company. And finally, for less than 40 hours a week, the owner can make business magic happen.

Subscribe now.