Use it to get better at it! 🤔😳

Okay, thanks for joining me today.

Pretty exciting day here in my household, my son has turned 13 Today is literally his birthday and 13 years old, it's quite a milestone, it's an interesting reflection for me and how fast it has gone.

If you're a parent, then you will know that time can be difficult, like the days can be very long, but the years are short.

And it literally feels yesterday that He was born.

And I was reflecting this morning in my journaling about this kind of milestone memories that I have two years old at four years old, going to the first day of primary school, and then almost skips all the way through to finishing Primary School in one memory, which it was very challenging.

It's like, wow, there's a lot of time in there that then got reduced just to, to memories beginning Primary School finishing Primary School.

Last year, He began high school and obviously, COVID made it very difficult.

It was a less memorable year, it was memorable for different reasons, rather than just perhaps a more typical transition from primary school through to high school.

But what I wanted to reflect on today was an interesting experience, I had my first experience running a system that I created.

So read this book profit first.

And if you are an entrepreneur, then you should definitely get that book, it will make a massive difference for you.

And however, out of that book, I was like, You know what, I need to have this systematized need to have this replicable.

And so I went through and extracted out what I learned from it, what I saw was actually required.

But then when I went running this system, for the first time, I found that my instructions were inadequate, that there was a bunch of steps that were implied, or were more difficult than I wanted them to be.

Basically, it meant using a calculator to come out with four different numbers, put in the top number, and then work out the percentages for the other numbers.

Now what was interesting is I went through my first numbers, which was one for-profit 39 For owner salary, 15 for tax.

And then I got to this last number, which was 65, for running the business, as expenses for the business.

And I was like, Well, hang on, that's telling me $4,900.

And yet, when I look in my bank account, there was like $3,200, or 2800, something like that.

And I'm like, What's going on here? And because I've never run the system before, I had essentially calculated 120%.

So one plus 39 plus 15 plus 65, actually came out at 120%.

Well, that's, that's one way to guarantee difficulties if the numbers don't actually add up to 100%.

So I had to scale back my operating expenses to 45%.

And I was like, Okay, great.

This is now 100% Is this ideal, this is not ideal.

But since my maths was so poor, in the first episode, I was like, Well, boy, boy, but instead of even going to the calculator, what I did was tweak the spreadsheet.

And now it's just literally put the number in and all four of those numbers are calculated instantly.

And it's while it might be, it's not going to be more work than putting in the number typing out the multiplication of zero times 0.

01 times 0.

39, writing those numbers down.

By doing the work first up and getting that spreadsheet in, I can just duplicate the spreadsheet, drop the number in and I've got all my numbers, and then I'm into that next step.

And I actually had it as one process.

And what I did was split it into two.

So one is to get the numbers and move the money for the first bit.

And then the second bit is to distribute the money out to where it goes.

So Profit First very interesting idea.

And that is that if you do not have easy access to the money, then it's far easier not to go to the money that is the profits or the money that is the government's which is called taxes, and rather actually have that money saved away in a different bank account.

So it's not visible in the operating expenses.

What I took from all of this and what I want the point for you to be is that it taught me to use the system to make it better than if I don't use the system, it stays as something that is stale, and it begins to decay.

And it never actually becomes something valuable.

It's not a living asset.

It's a dead asset.

And it's very questionable whether anything dead is actually an asset in the world of business and in life.

It's called Living so if you've got a living asset, great, that thing's alive, that thing's valuable.

But if it's dead, I suppose like things like gold or houses but to the degree that a house has people in it which define for me whether it's living or dead, if that house is not handy to people for 5060 7080 100 300 years, like that house is probably decayed and has fallen into disrepair.

And the same with the systems, these SOPs, their standard operating procedures, if they're not used, then they will fall away and decay.

And they will be subject to the second law of thermodynamics.

And if you haven't studied physics, six basically says that things will decay away that they get worse.

And there's a beautiful book called, Why is it called? It's like naval, Rava Kant's, Almanac, or something like that.

And in it, He describes human beings as localized areas of reversing entropy, right, because we can create and do things, we can overall create in a localized environment, more structure and more organization than there was beforehand.

And all of this comes back to having an energy source, which if you look in the sky to know what time it is for you right now, but right now here, it's, we've got sunshine, again, there is a gigantic energy source that is in the sky.

And this allows me and allows you to actually create areas of the localized organization, which is pretty cool.

But overall, eventually, the sun will expand consume the earth, and everything will, it will come to a halt, this solar system eventually will die, estimated at around 4.

9 billion years from now.

So most likely, we're not here, you know, it's a long time.

And but the principle applies, though, that it actually takes the usage of a system or a process to make it better to improve it.

And next time I come around to that system, it should run more smoothly.

I'm not saying that it's going to be perfect, but it should be like, Okay, I'm just going to open the spreadsheet, duplicate it, stick the numbers in.

And in fact, I've just realized I don't even need to duplicate it, I can just have that one spreadsheet seat in the accounting smolder, typing the new numbers, out it comes do the paperwork, do the banking, this is an experience that must be convenient, it must, must be easy to do.

And it must be worthwhile like it saves maybe one or two minutes in time instead of having to do on a calculator.

But also note that it significantly reduces the chances of error.

In those calculations, I've got one number to put in, which is pretty easy.

It's like whatever the amount is in that income cash account, but that in the spreadsheet and outcome these numbers.

So while it took 345 minutes, six minutes, I don't know how long it took to make this spreadsheet.

From now, I have a system that can be deployed in 10 seconds, and I'll get the correct answers.

So over time, that two minutes instead to get saved 10 seconds versus two minutes.

And it doesn't sound like much.

But if you are an entrepreneur, and you are running a business, and particularly if you have kids and you're married, then your time is extremely precious.

And while two minutes might not same be much for you also realize that long term, there's a greater benefit than you can completely delegate this system, you could have your bookkeeper run it, you can have a team member run it, even if they're not technically moving the money just like I want to see this every on the 10th and the 25th.

Here, my numbers run this, and I'm still wobbling Profit First suggests doing another 10th and 25th.

But for years, I have done my numbers on a Tuesday night.

And so I'm still playing with this, I kind of set it up as a calendar.

And the calendar sends an email to me because I don't trust my calendar usage at all.

Like it's way too easy to flick away a calendar reminder for a system that has to be deployed and then just not remember it.

And so when it doesn't get remembered, it doesn't get done.

And then there's no point in having the system at all.

But by having the calendar, send the email now it sits in my email.

And if you have come across getting things done at all, or you're a fan of zero inboxes, then this means that it forces me to deal with this.

If you have no email control, then you've got a problem.

This may not solve your problem at all.

But if you actually can manage an email inbox, and if you can't do that, then go check out getting things done.

But if you can, the system sits there until it is deployed is like okay, this is not easily dismissable so that is all I got for you today.

I hope you have an awesome day.

I'm going to go hang out with my son we're going to have Up to the Gold Coast Marriott, which is our first experience of this.

And we've had very good things about it.

It has a gigantic pool that has schools of fish in it.

Like it's a hotel with a pool that has schools of fish.

And it's like, wow, this is seriously cool.

So I'm looking forward to talking to you tomorrow about that experience, how did it go, and whether there are any lessons for us around systems and processes.

Until then, I hope you have an awesome day and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of this experience.

See you then.