Implicit vs explicit systems in your business...

Okay, thanks for joining me for today's episode, I wanted to cover this idea of implicit symptoms, symptoms.

Goodness, I've kicked back into my doctor mode there.

That's pretty funny.

Yes, I am actually a legitimate doctor.

I've been a general practitioner for about 10 years.

But I also got into the business after my family imploded around my father's relative inability to understand, manage, and look after money.

And this was years ago, the problems were probably there through most of the 1990s.

But it all blew up and ended up in my parents divorced by 2001.

And the actual problem was his lack of understanding about business about money.

Even though He was an obstetrician-gynecologist, there was plenty of money coming in, He just didn't give a fuck about it.

He was like, well, whatever, there's lots of it, I'm not going to pay attention to it.

I'm not going to upskill.

And you got to remember back in the 90s, this was before Rich Dad, Poor Dad, this was before any kind of like understanding, at least in my world, that part of being a doctor was having to look after businesses.

So I went off and was hurting from this experience, I saw how much chaos it caused to my family, to my father to my mother.

And I was like, Okay, I had this cool experience where one of our family friends who also was a specialist doctor gave me this book, and it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it's like, Hey, Tom, you probably should check this out.

This is cool.

Have a look at this, pay attention to this.

And that was my first exposure to what do the rich do differently.

If you haven't read Rich Dad Poor Dad, then you probably should.

But there's a lot of really interesting ideas.

And over the 20 years since I've read that book, my understanding of what He is talking about has changed.

And principle in that is an idea of buying an asset that you buy, the rich people buy the asset, and then that creates cash flow.

And this was my story.

This was my adventure.

And I ended up creating a business school graduate medicine.

And this business in itself was a major learning experience.

I was like, wow, there is a lot going on.

And my usual work as a general practitioner, I was involved in a business as part of a business.

But as an employee or a contractor to that business, my job was to come in, see the patients, get them better.

See the next patient, get them better see the next patient, get them better.

I didn't have to deal with the accounting of the business, the marketing of the business, the fulfillment systems, the safety systems, any of that stuff.

That wasn't my job.

That was the practice.

I've paid the practice to deal with that.

And my role in terms of managing myself as a business was essential, hey, here's a meeting with an accountant.

We'll go through the Xero files.

Let's work out how this affects your tax strategy.

But graduate medicine was an entirely different experience.

It really showed me that I knew very little about actually running a business and I had done lots of courses.

So I've been a Frank Kern devotee for some time, if you don't know who Frank is Frank, is basically the consultant for internet marketing.

And he's been doing it a very long time.

I think he's at 2021 years now started in 1999.

And He is wonderful.

I mean, amazing stuff.

Frank's really cool.

But there's a lot of other ones you can see behind me here.

Russell Brunson.

I think Russell’s stuff is incredible.

I mean, really, the secrets trilogy is phenomenal for business.

But for whatever reason, I had an experience of working at my practice where our systems were implicit.

They weren't largely written down.

Or in fact, note, they weren't implicit what they were explicit.

But they didn't match what was being done.

No one actually used them.

And this is a problem.

This is a problem.

And I've interviewed other business owners and found out what they're doing.

And often there's just like, we're small enough where we can run on implicit systems.

everyone kind of knows what we do.

There's a culture of Yep, this is how we do it.

And we just kind of like, work our way through.

Then there are definitely businesses that have explicit systems, but they don't match what's actually being done.

And this is a problem because then it's like, well, hang on, it says to do this, but we're doing this and if you run into problems, then it's like, well, we'll go back to what was written down, but that's not what was happening.

It's like Ah, okay, so you really have a dead set of systems, they're gathering dust on the bookshelf, they're not actually being used, no one is, no one actually reviews them, or it's been years, there's no tracking of when they went through them.

And what I've had in medicine is a very interesting experience in that the disability sector is very much on his end, it sucks for them.

They're like, why we've got to go through this every three months, but at least they are reviewing it to some degree, it's not a surprise to go, oh, by the way, this is how we do things that actually have to go through and sign off.

And this is, this is, to me is an example of a sector that is too big to run on implicit systems that there are too many people that to look after one disability client, you're probably looking at at least five, six people.

And so for a house that has four or five disabled clients who are looking at a staff of maybe 20, plus ancillary staff, and that you're probably looking at 24 people.

And that's well beyond the usual understanding of the number of people that can work together before there are problems, that's usually five, six, or seven.

And then you've also got compliance issues have things been signed off, where's the money coming from in Australia, this money is very often coming from the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which means that it's public money, it has to be accounted for it has to be looked after.

And so they are forced to put in explicit simple systems, and then also have them signed off.

Now there's one more stage beyond that.

And that is where the processes are actually used in the creation of the work or the deployment of the work.

And this could be a system to create assets.

Now this in a disability experience is probably not that very not common, maybe once a year, there's a preview of what's already been done.

And then a new plan will be created for that client.

But in businesses, this would be a reasonably common experience.

Right now, this is a creative experience that I am doing for you, I am creating a Facebook Live, which is an asset for my business.

But then there's a secondary part, which is the deployment of this asset.

And that's where the system for the deployment comes in.

It runs through a series of A to B tasks where this video is extracted out of Facebook, and then it's taken to audited AI, and it's transcribed into a transcription.

Then from there, the title can be extracted for the YouTube, the subtitles can be placed on the quote, cards can be created, the podcast can be created.

But Bill beyond all of this is how did I create those systems.

And this, to me is the holy grail of business.

If you have a system to create systems, then wherever you need it in your business, whether it's in marketing, to create your messaging or to create your offers, whether it is in sales, to create a funnel, or to create a phone system to create an application questionnaire, whether it's in advertising to create paid ads, or organic SEO, whether it's in fulfillment in terms of tracking your clients, getting testimonials, getting case studies, the systems for all of those can be created, if you have this holy grail, this system that creates systems.

So what I want to ask you is where were you in this journey of systematization, maybe you're too small right now, maybe you're not doing a million a year in revenue, maybe you've got less than five people and you are running on implicit systems, which is totally fine.

That's the way to do it up until the point where you hit those limits, and you can push beyond them without systems, but you're unlikely to get beyond maybe two or 3 million a year in revenue, and it will be stressful, it can be done.

But to go beyond three to 10 or 20 or 50 or 100.

Like at some level, you are going to need to have a way of doing things in your business so that the number of people that you have working together knows how to work together.

So where are you? That's my question for you right now.

Are you at implicit systems? Are you at explicit systems but they're not used? They're not what's going on? Are you at explicit symptoms and people use them? Like you got that going on? You are dialed in ready to grow, to go from where you are through to that next level whether it's three 510, maybe 20, maybe 100.

And if you have this then you are in a very good place.

If you do not and you want some help around this Head over to System IO dot Dev, pop on your name, pop in your email address, and grab the training about how you can begin to transition to a systematized business.

Alright, thanks so much for tuning in today.

I hope you have an awesome day.

I'm going to go and grab lunch with one of my buddies and talk a little bit about systems and business.

I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode, where we continue this interesting discussion of how to go from no systems to systems in your business.

See you then.