Some systems are just like the laundry.

Okay, hey, thanks for tuning in.

If you saw the topic of this, you might be like, What has the laundry got to do with business? Surely these two things are so far apart from each other is irrelevant, it is pointless to be talking about something as mundane as laundry in the context of business.

And yet, this morning, my wife was like, can you take the laundry out and put it on the line.

And what I realized is that there are some processes in business that are just like this, that are repetitive, that continually come in, and have to go through a number of steps in order for them to be resolved.

So what I thought I might do is just have a look.

And one second, so let's check out the actual laundry.

And I'm going to go back here.

So as you can see, there is a pile of wash clothes on the floor down here is a pile of dirty clothes.

And here, you can see both a, we get that washing machine and a dryer.

And you might go well, what's all of this got to do? Well, you might just go Okay, hang on.

This is just the laundry.

How does this relate to business? Well, I want you to see that.

When you have a new customer come on, they have to go through a series of steps.

When you have a product customer go through as a prospect, they go through a series of steps.

When you do your banking, you go through a series of steps, and all of these things replicate the same thing that happens with the laundry, the laundry comes in, unclean, it comes in dirty and it comes out hopefully, either clean and iron are clean and folded.

So let's just have a look at the steps, right, let's just run through the particular steps.

So you might go, Okay, it's just a woman who but in actual fact, no, it doesn't, at least in my household, what we're going to find is, this is at least one place where it begins.

So this is in the bathroom.

And that's a dirty clothes basket that then has to travel down the corridor by someone, some humans got to do that.

It's pretty me often, He ends up then at the bottom there in the dirty clothes pile, it then has to go into the washing machine.

And then when that finishes, well, first of all, that's going to be turned on.

And I don't know if you've ever had this in your family where you come home, do the clothes are sitting there, but no one's actually turned them on yet.

That happens.

So it's got to be remembered to be turned on.

But then let's say that happens, it then gets done.

And then there's a decision point.

So one decision could be to take those clothes and put them in the dryer.

One other decision is to take them out and put them out here, which is our clothesline.

Okay, so now, let's say we've now got some clean clothes, they then it doesn't stop there like you like hang on how many steps are there, there's a bunch of steps to get the laundry done.

Okay, now, this could be one stopping place.

This is clean clothes.

But this laundry is too small.

And so what actually happens is this close then progress through my house, all the way through through the kitchen, we're going to come into the kitchen, it's kind of like you might be why does this happen, mainly because that laundry is too small to deal with this next stage here, which is the sorting and the folding.

Now there's actually, even more, every Monday, a truck comes and picks up my ironing and takes it away and brings it back.

And the final outcome out of all of this is that the laundry goes from dirty to clean.

Now, there's a lot of steps here.

And in a household.

These are physical things, it's reasonably easy to work out that the clothes have to go from the clothes basket to the laundry and into the washing machine and then to the line or to the dryer, then out of that over to a place where they can be sorted and folded and then put away.

And if all of that happens, then we end up with clean clothes in my cupboard.

If that stalls at any point, then there's going to be a backlog at that particular point.

So let's say that we go away for a week.

And there's a huge backlog of clothes.

It's going to take a while for that system to keep running.

But nonetheless, when you have multiple people doing tasks like this, it really helps to know what everyone's doing.

And this in a household is relatively easy.

Once you start getting through into a business where you have a lot of data or a lot of people a lot of files It's very easy to suddenly start finding piles of clothes in different locations.

You go along, it's like, hang on, this is the kitchen.

Why have we got a pile of clothes sitting in the kitchen? And then next question, we're like, whose clothes? Are they? Are they clean or dirty? What do I do about this? And let's say that it was just a one-off Eli, okay, well, I'm going to take him to the laundry, I'm not really sure whether they're clean or don't, I'm just going to take him to the laundry and get it dealt with.

But then three days later, you find another set of clothes, like what's going on here.

And that is when hopefully you will recognize that there is a systems problem, like hanging on, the system is generating a result, that result is that some type of clothes, either clean or dirty or ending up in the kitchen? And then you must look at why is that happening? And hopefully, course correct whatever's going on.

If you're a small team, like under seven people, it is entirely possible you can speak to or examine and go, Hey, what's going on here? How come this is happening.

And remember that this is a physical example, once you start getting into the computers, it actually gets a lot harder to track where everything is.

But in this physical example, and you've got a small team, you go, Hey, stop putting the clothes in the kitchen, they go over here in the sorting, and then it changes and then that system changes hopefully, that Bakiev Your changes they learn.

And so humans are learning experience like we are learning organisms.

My son's putting the clothes in the kitchen.

Now he's like, okay, I get it got to take them all the way through.

I'm like, Yeah, mate, that really helps when you carry the clean clothes all the way through the sorting place, make sure that happens is I got distracted, I'm like, Oh, really, okay, that's cool.

Just make sure that the clothes go into the sorting space.

And this gets a whole lot more difficult though when you've got more than 17 because trying to keep track of this stuff is very difficult.

And then also, even if you have less than 17, it can be very overwhelming if you do not have well-defined systems for actually keeping track of all of these locations.

Like notice that it could be one piece of clothes that goes from the dirty clothesline to the laundry to the washing machine to the line to the sorting room, then folded and back into the thing that's one thing and eat it we'll do that maybe once a week and round and round it goes and this is the same for your business.

Your clients are going through a journey and where there are problems is a sign to you that there is a problem in the systems and you must be able to deal with this.

If you need some help around this.

If you're like growing and your business is actually doing well you are the most at risk of this because the success at zero to 1 million is not what will be required from one to 10 Yes, you can grind through an extremely stressful and get to three but to go beyond that good luck if you don't know have your processes and systems on point.

If you want more help head over the system I O dot dev pop in your name pop in your email address.

I look forward to seeing you on the next episode as we continue this business journey into growth and expansion beyond 1 million.