Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Let's talk systems.

And when I look at where I'm at with systems and processes, I've got a reference to those that have come before, like, in terms of the stuff that I have learned from.

And these three names come to mind in terms of looking at systems and processes.

And those are Tim Francis, Garrett, J.

White, and Greg Hickman.

And they have played various parts in this journey for me.

And I knew that systems were important because I discovered pretty quickly that I was not very good at business, I was running a medical education company called graduate medicine.

And I was struggling with time.

So I thought it would be a really good idea to have fulfillment handled, and bring on more doctors to produce the actual product, which was basically like Cliff's Notes for medicine.

So it's like, Great, I'll get them on board.

And they will, they will help do the fulfillment.

And that'll free me up to do sales, marketing because I knew that sales, marketing were critical, No cash, no business.

So it's great, I get them to do that work.

So I can keep building the product.

And I'll come across sales, marketing, and that'll free up my time.

Now, if you've been down this journey, you will perhaps know what I experienced what happened next? Well, a couple of things.

One, my free time did not appear, I suddenly was managing people.

And this took a lot more time than I was expecting.

This was my first experience of finding out pretty quick, that businesses require instructions to go out to people like you've got to tell him, tell him what to do.

And so this actually took a lot more time.

It's like, well, what's going on here? I don't know.

Well, I told you to do that.

Was it done to standard? Was it done correctly? And my experience was that I had to stop this pretty quickly.

Because the cash was just like was poor.

And at one in my Well, what's going on here? And doctors, not cheap.

Like to pay them for one hour, I believe we were at 140 to 165 bucks an hour? Like why a lot of money to get people to work who are professionals.

And it's like, Well, okay, the cash was just poor now.

And the time was not there.

So I was like, Okay, this has to stop.

So pretty quickly scaled all that back, but I was scared enough from this to go.

I don't know what I'm doing here at all.

And so in the, in the beginnings, I was looking for answers.

And I came across the idea that systems and processes could be beneficial to run businesses.

And a couple of things happen number one, so I ran into Tim Francis, out of profit factory, not sure where I came across him, but He was like, you know, what, if you want to have systems, then I can show you how to do it.

And He brought this beautiful concept of, of the way that He lays out processes.

And it was divine, it was really amazing.

It was like, Okay, great.

There's, there's the title of the process.

And then there's the purpose of the process.

And then there are the steps of the process.

And then there were checks.

And so these things became very helpful because what you may find is that as you get better processes, you don't need all the detailed instructions.

Like if you've done something 17 times before, then there's a learning experience where that process becomes a habit.

And that we covered that yesterday in the Facebook Live yesterday.

But the first time through, it's extremely helpful to have the instructions to go, Oh, wow.

Okay, and then there's that step.

And then there's that step.

And then there's that step.

And so Tim brought through this idea that there's a way to write processes that is useful for the first time through and there's it's useful for the 17th time through, and so extremely helpful go check them out profit factory.

Next up was structure and Garrett J.

White brought through to me these three big categories of business production, profit and protection.

And really the fourth one is power.

But if you are struggling for power, like actually to have the capacity to do things, then I invite you to check out the link warrior comm three.

com and go learn out how He has mastered the conversation of power like literally mastered there.

If you're in business and you're not a warrior, then I'm like, What are you doing? How do you get the power to actually do the things that are required?

But separate conversation for that was this idea of these three big areas of business, production, profit, and protection, and then each of those breaking down to four more areas.

So production breaks down to marketing, sales, advertising fulfillment, and then profit breaks down to processes, systems, optics, and people.

And then protection breaks down into accounting into legal into cash.

And there's one more that I've forgotten, most of my time right now is not in protection.

You know, as I have very, I do think it's very important.

But for the stage of business that I mean, a lot of that stuff just isn't relevant yet.

Like, it's almost like this stage of the business and gets references.

This is like some people, if you're running a $20 million, or $100 million business, then the protection game is critical.

If you're trying to get to a million dollars in revenue, like I am, then not so important.

Better to work on marketing, and filming, and sales and advertising and systems and processes, optics and people.

So that structure of business was extraordinarily helpful.

It was like, Oh, wow, okay.

Right.

There are all of these areas that if I break it up, and notice what I was shocked, there was no place for meetings, or what about the meetings? Okay, well, hang on, maybe that's not actually that important in terms of running a business.

And so far, that's been a true finding.

For me, I'm like, Okay, well, you know, the requirement to document meetings is is less, it's like, well, what's coming out of that meeting? What are the actions that need to be taken? What needs to be done from that meeting, and that's where that fits into the 12 categories.

And then Greg Hickman was out of alt agency, so I joined one of his early programs using Infusionsoft at the time.

And if you have been involved in Infusionsoft, you will realize pretty quickly that the way that you approach that is very important.

If you're approaching that in a not systematic way, then it gets out of control really quickly.

It's like what automations are going on here? What's happening inside of this? Like, don't get me wrong, Infusionsoft is an amazing software, their visual builder is awesome.

Like it's so helpful.

But it's almost so powerful that it's really interesting to realize it's possible to create some things that like, why is that happening? Why did that happen? Are there yeah, there's this hidden automation, not hidden, that it can be buried down.

And so Greg, showed me the way to set up tags and actually label things and have things labeled correctly so that they can be tracked.

And This in itself, like combining those three, suddenly, there was like this systematic approach.

Now, not really suddenly, after about six to eight weeks, or even longer of intense work trying to put this all together so that I could have a system that works for myself, a system that can create systems a system that can create assets, a system that can deploy assets, like these systems, but very powerful, very helpful in business.

It's like having the instruction manual for a Lego set.

It's like trying to build Lego without the instruction manual.

Like you can build like the basic stuff pretty okay.

But as soon as you try and go to advance Lego-like you're trying to build a Technic set, without the instructions, it's really difficult.

And that is the that's the experience, I think, for a lot of business owners like is like, wow, why aren't we using the instructions? Why aren't we using instructions? Like that is a question.

That is very interesting to me.

And it's like, okay, if you don't use the instructions, then it means that you have to manage people and manage people.

It's not that much fun.

It's like herding cats.

You know, it's like wow, man, this is difficult.

But if you just had the instruction manual, then it becomes a lot easier.

If you're interested in that conversation, then head over to System IO dot Dev and check out the opt-in page there that will allow you to go and see some training around these ideas.

Thanks for tuning in today.

Look forward to seeing you on another Facebook live very soon.