Systems are a constraint on my creativity!

Okay, so as you saw in the title, it is an interesting conversation that I had this morning with a couple of my brothers out of Wake Up Warrior.

And these guys are all experienced business people, businessmen.

One of the interesting things that we were discussing was about systems and processes and why they're good, why they're not good.

And one of the interesting things that one of the men said was, well, I don't really want to do systems and processes, because I feel like it's going to be a constraint on me, it's going to be constrained to my creativity, it's going to be a system that prevents me from fully expressing who I am.

Now I want to bring to your attention an interesting book that I'm reading it on a little bit of a mike McCalla V, it's beans at the moment.

So the first one is profit first.

And if you're not profitable today, then you should go get that book profit first.

But I moved on to his second, it's not really second in the series, I guess it could be like, it's from 2012.

It's called the Pumpkin Plan.

And so nine years ago, this book was written.

But it was an interesting definition of an entrepreneur.

And an entrepreneur was someone who creates systems and processes so other people can do them.

systems and processes so that other people can do the work.

And I was like, Oh, look at this, this is a confusion, there's been confusion here in my friend's mind between what He sees as his role as an entrepreneur.

And then this other definition of an entrepreneur where the systems and processes get created.

So that is that creativity, there is that solving of the problem.

But the purpose then is to hand it over to Team.

And if that is able to be done, then guess what, that frees up the entrepreneur to actually face the next problem, and hopefully, a bigger problem that has more money in it.

Garrett J.

White is on record as saying, The problem is where the payday is, the payday is where the problem is, let's get it right, the payday is in the problem.

So bigger problems, bigger payday.

Now, if I'm an entrepreneur, and I think my job is to stay creative, then it's going to limit how many problems I can actually deal with.

If I refuse to systematize, then it's going to be a significant constraint when I get to a certain stage, now straight off the bat, if you're a startup, or if you're doing like an early-stage business, where it's just you and three people, one person, one VA, whatever it is, like you don't really need systems.

But if you were to choose systems at that time, there are a couple of benefits.

Number one, you're going to have a lot of reps in doing systems and processes when you actually come to the time where most businesses do need to go to systems and process and that typically is at one of two points.

One, you're around the million in revenue.

And you're trying to get to say 10 million, or you have a bunch of team members that are starting to interact in funny ways.

You've gone past the seven-man limit, the seven-person limit the 17 limit, whatever that number is, it might be five, it might be seven, but somewhere around that the management by people the management by meetings management by telling people what to do becomes unviable because there are too many moving parts too many different ways of doing things.

And in Mike's book, there was this beautiful analogy of a highway.

Why does a highway work? I mean, you've got a bunch of cars all going along at 65 miles per hour, which is pretty fast.

And yet there are relatively few accidents on that highway.

Why is that? Well, He gave the analogy that if there were no constraints on the speed, and you're allowed to do 10 to 150 miles an hour on that highway was just like not regulated, not looked after.

Then you're going to have some major chaos.

Major chaos, you got 150-mile hour Ferrari ramming to attract doing 20 miles per hour.

No good.

No good.

I mean, people know about this.

People know about this, the highway designers know about this.

When you come to a hill, there might be a third lane added so that the trucks can go up at a speed that doesn't impair the other guys doing 65 miles per hour.

And so they thought about it.

They thought about how the structure of the situation the structure of the terrain requires that third lane to get the trucks who are going to have to go slower than 65 miles per hour, a space to go through while the rest of the traffic goes ahead.

And so if you get to this stage in the business and you haven't done this thing, guess what is on the other side, chaos, like literal chaos, things start to break down badly.

And it can be really bad if a business is actually going really well.

And they don't have this on point.

Now you have a recipe for 2 am, phone calls for work getting return confusion, complaints team, not happy, all sorts of problems that didn't exist at less than a million in revenue that didn't exist at less than seven in the team.

But as you hit that experience, then all hell breaks loose.

And it can be managed one other way.

And that is that you split the teams again.

And instead of having seven people, you have seven teams, and then they can grow to say, what seven times 749 always risky to do maths on a live stream.

But nonetheless, I think you've got a way with that 177 49 Snake F's 49 people, as long as those teams stay isolated from each other.

And this is the same with those law firms where one chunk of work gets assigned to a lawyer.

And so you can easily have 15 lawyers that are working on one case.

But as you start to have multiple interactions like that 49 people if they've got to interact with the other 48 business, people like the other 48 team members, at some point, whether it's irregularly or regularly, then you've got confusion, then you've got difficulties.

And so getting this system on point actually is critical for growth that does not store for growth that can continue to bring more business to the business without destroying it.

Like that.

It doesn't go into a flatline expansion, where revenues go up, but expenses go up at the same rate, and profitability just isn't there.

And that's going to be a sign that there are inefficiencies in the way things are done.

If you want some help around this, then I invite you to head over to system I O dot Dev, where you can put your name and email in and get a bunch of help there about how to even identify this problem.

What are you dealing with here? And what can be done about it at www.systemio.dev?

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Look forward to seeing you on another episode very soon as we continue this exploration into systems and processes in scalable businesses.

See you then.