How to identify and protect your moneymaker role

Executive overview

Most people treat all tasks as equally urgent — a ringing phone competes with a million-dollar decision. Every leader and team member has one role that, left undone, costs the company the most. Identify it. Then defend it.

Define your moneymaker, then protect it with blocked time — everything else is secondary.

Finding your moneymaker

• Your moneymaker is the one activity that, if neglected, costs the company the most over time.
• For a leader, it's rarely operations — it's the high-leverage output only you can produce.
• Mike Michalowicz calls this the Queen Bee role: in a hive, everything exists to protect the queen's core function.
• If you don't know your moneymaker, you probably don't have it defended.

Defending your moneymaker with blocked time

• Schedule dedicated blocks for your moneymaker and treat them as non-negotiable.
• When a conflict arises, move other commitments — not the moneymaker block.
• Example: writing is blocked all day Monday, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday morning; a Monday conflict meant working on a flight instead.

Applying this to your team

• Identify the moneymaker for every team member — if you don't know, they probably don't either.
• Have direct conversations (one-on-one, over lunch) to define each person's highest-leverage role.
• Help each person defend their moneymaker the same way you defend yours.
• When the whole team is aligned on this, growth compounds.