How to Grow a Business from $10M to $200M (Scalable Operating System)

In this video, I want to share the simple operating system my business partners and I are using to profitably scale six different businesses simultaneously inside our $200 million holding company. And we're doing all of this, uh, without getting stuck in endless meetings, without being enslaved to our email inboxes, without enduring the endless shoulder taps and "Hey boss, you got a minute?" that most CEOs and Founders get. And most importantly, without burning out.

In fact, I'm doing all of this while taking at least one 30-day vacation every single year and numerous week- and two-week-long vacations throughout the year. Now, I realize that may sound a little bit crazy right now. Hang with me, we'll talk more about that later. But what I want to emphasize is, if your goal is to pivot from that flailing founder into a true CEO who works above your business instead of in your business, then you're definitely going to want to watch this entire video.

Now, that's a bold claim, I get it. And if I were sitting there, uh, watching this just like you, I'd probably be a little bit skeptical. At the same time, I'd probably be thinking, "Hey, that sounds pretty good. How can I get one of those scalable operating systems in my business?" If two things were true: number one, if I knew that this operating system actually worked for, just in general. And number two, if I understood how it worked so that I knew that it would work inside my business, if I knew that it was absolutely perfect and would fit within my business.

So that's what I want to do with this video, and it's what I want to do with this associated, uh, case study that I I'm also going to link to down in the description. I want to break down our scalable operating system. I want to talk about how it works, and I want to use my own business as a case study so that you have all of the information that you need to reach your own conclusions.

So this is it. This is the scalable operating system. And a little bit later on in this video, we're going to be literally zooming in to the different components, the different pieces that make up the operating system. Uh, we're going to talk about the steps that you would need to take if you want to have your own, uh, the critical tools and systems that make it up, um, and and how to go about getting one of these operating systems installed in your own business. So if that sounds good, again, you are definitely going to want to hang around.

Now, the term "operating system" is thrown around a lot. One of the things that I'm going to do is define exactly what an operating system is, a business operating system. But I first just want to point out that this is different, okay? This is different from all of the other off-the-shelf operating systems that you might have read about, uh, in different books or maybe even attempted to implement in your own business. And you probably, if you've been around for any length of time, certainly if you're watching this video still, you probably know, uh, some of the operating systems that I'm talking about.

This is the operating system, right? This operating system that that I'm sharing with you here, this is the operating system that your business needs to scale without an over-reliance on the founder, I.E., you, probably, or any other key individuals within the organization. And we tested, and I mentioned this before, by taking that 30-day vacation from your business.

Now, again, if that sounds crazy right now, if you even think to yourself, "I don't want to take a vacation," right? I I want to be able to hang out and get some work done. Hang with me, right? Hang with me. Whether you do it or not, I want you to have the ability to do it. Because what we have found, if you can't be away from your business for 30 days in a chunk, there's a really good chance that your business isn't scalable, it isn't sellable. And there's an even better chance that you don't own your business and your business owns you. So whether you take it or not, I want you to have the ability to do it.

Just like Josh did. In fact, Josh, who's been one of our clients for a number of years now, he set a goal not just to take 30 days off, but to take a full two months off. And I'm really excited he was able to do that. He essentially moved his family down to Costa Rica for two months. And the best part is, while he was gone, his business, his company, they actually broke their quarterly and year-to-date revenue records. So it's not one of these things where when you go, things have to be bad. When you come back, they can actually be better.

And the best part is, he did it again this year. And this year, he went even further away, went to Spain instead of Costa Rica. And he was gone even longer, two and a half months this time. So he posted this inside our client, uh, community, inside our client Slack channel that we have where we can converse and, uh, connect with all of our clients. And I was just so happy for him. He's a humble guy, cool guy, family guy, loves to surf. Uh, and in this case, he just wanted to take, you know, take the family to Spain. And he was able to do that.

So look, I don't know, I don't know what your version of entrepreneurial freedom looks like. Maybe it's taking the family to Spain for two and a half months like Josh did. Maybe it's finally buying that, uh, fancy car or boat that you've always wanted. Maybe it's sitting on the beach and doing absolutely nothing. Or heck, maybe it's working 80-hour weeks. Maybe you want to work more, uh, but you would like to be able to work more on the high-impact projects that you one, enjoy, and then two, move the needle, instead of all the low-leverage, menial task drudge work that you hate. Whatever it is, I want you to have it, right? Whatever it is, I want you to have it. And I believe that this new operating system will help you get it.

Now, if you agree at any point in time during this video and you want my team to actually help you build your own scalable operating system in your business, I'm going to recommend that you book a demo call with my team. The link should be somewhere in the description, somewhere around this video. Um, but booking a call, a demo call, would be that next step.

My my goal for producing this case study video is really simple. I want to educate you on number one, what a scalable operating system is. But transparently, my real hope is that as we walk through this together, you not only think, "Gosh, I need one of those in my business," but you also think, "I should really get these folks to help me build it." Because as you're about to see, the scalable operating system I'm going to show you is simple to understand. I mean, I'm going to go through all the steps. I'm going to literally show you examples of ours. You're going to get to, I'm going to open the kimono, you're going to get to peer behind the scenes and see ours. It's easy to understand, um, but it's relatively complicated to actually build and install. And I would argue that's a good thing.

I know a lot of entrepreneurs, we want to, you know, avoid doing the hard work because there's enough hard stuff out there. But I would argue it's a good thing. Because it's complicated, because it's a little bit difficult, your competition is not going to do this. They haven't done it yet. They're probably not going to do it, which gives you a real lasting business advantage. The easy stuff closes, it goes away because everybody can do it. Fortunately for you, though, you don't have to figure this stuff out on your own.

Now, I want to be clear. We do not sell courses or trainings at The Scalable Company. We work one-on-one with entrepreneurs to build and install fully customized operating systems because we know that that's the only way it's going to get done. The only way this is going to get done. If we just give you a course and say, "Watch all these videos, good luck," you won't do it, okay? Even if I write a book, which I did, people still want help actually getting the stuff built and done because you already have so much on your plate as it is. So while this process can be complicated, we can virtually eliminate all the complexity by doing the difficult work, by doing the heavy lifting for you, and also enabling your team to help as well.

Now, I'm not trying to sell everyone on this. I know that what I'm talking about right now is not for everybody. Not all entrepreneurs are ready for the services that you, that that we offer. If you're just getting started, if you're still trying to figure out how to get your business off the ground, still trying to find product-market fit, I want you to know I'm rooting for you. We're rooting for you here at The Scalable Company. But this is not for you. Um, this is for post-ramp entrepreneurs, founders, small business owners who you've had that success, but you're starting to really feel like you are the bottleneck in your business. So if that sounds like you, if you think you might be ready, there is zero downside whatsoever to booking a demo session and speaking with someone on my team about getting the scalable operating system installed in your business.

That said, I'm sure that there are still plenty, uh, of folks watching this who would like some more information. So let's dig in to a little bit more about how the scalable operating system works. And who I am. I feel like I should probably introduce myself. So first of all, hi. Um, I'm Ryan Dice. You may have heard of me. That sounds kind of weird, but if you've been around marketing, the marketing and entrepreneurial world for any length of time, you may very well recognize my name. And the reason is, is I'm the co-founder of The Scalable Company, as well as DigitalMarketer.com. And I'm also the founder and host of Traffic and Conversion Summit, which for the last 13 plus years has been the largest gathering of digital marketers, the largest digital marketing conference in North America.

But I'm not just a marketing guy. Uh, over the last two decades, my partners and I have started 17 businesses. Uh, we've had four really significant, life-changing exits. And according to Shark Tank, Damon, Shark Tank star Damon John, my companies practically own the internet. Yes, Damon did, in fact, say that about me in one of his books. Obviously, a bit of an exaggeration. Still, I very much appreciate the compliment. Thank you so much, Damon.

Now, collectively, our portfolio of 17 companies and counting generated over $200 million in the last 12 months. So I know what it takes. I know what it takes. I know where you are right now. I know what it takes to scale from that small, bootstrap business that pays the bills into a scalable and even exit business that creates both freedom and generational wealth. I've also written a couple of books, including "Digital Marketing For Dummies" and "Get Scalable," the book that you see in front of you, right now. And as a speaker, I have shared the stage with other business, uh, and thought leaders, including Sir Richard Branson, William Shatner, uh, Gary Vaynerchuk, Martha Stewart, uh, Tim Ferriss, Damon John, Dave Ramsey, again, just to name a few.

Now, I want to be clear. I don't say any of this, uh, to impress you. I don't say this to pretend like I am God's gift to business and entrepreneurship. I tell you this because I want you to know, number one, that I actually do this stuff. Uh, just like you, I am in the arena. My partners and I are in there doing this work day in and day out. More importantly, I don't only make my money talking about this stuff. And I think that's a really important distinction. The sad fact is that a lot of people who consult and write books and create courses on growth and scale are either retired has-beens at best, or Lamborghini-renting TikTok chuckleheads and hustlers at worst. And you know what I'm talking about. That is not who I am. That is not my game. I love business. I love entrepreneurs. I love giving back. But candidly, the main reason that I write, the main reason that I teach, the main reason that my partners take on, uh, clients, is because we want to create additional deal flow and investment opportunities into our portfolio companies. So that's the big why. That's the big reason behind this. But I do want you to hear and I want you to understand that number one, I care. And two, I I know what you're feeling, right? You know, I want you to understand that I know what you're going through. Um, and I believe that I have discovered something that will help you win.

More importantly, and I mean this with all sincerity, the most important job that I have in my life is husband, uh, and father of four amazing kids. And unfortunately, I've also experienced the downside of an unbalanced entrepreneurial life: leaving for work before my kids are awake, getting back home after everyone is in bed and asleep, missing soccer games and dance recitals, canceling date nights, being late for more family dinners than I can count. You name it, I know what it is like to sacrifice my health, to sacrifice my sanity, and to sacrifice relationships with the people I love the most at the altar of scale. And I'm personally on a mission to help my fellow entrepreneurs not make the same mistakes that I've made, because the truth is, you don't have to.

Now, I want to ask you a question, and I really want you to answer it honestly: Are you actually a business owner, or are you really just self-employed? Think about those two words: business owner versus self-employed, right? Which is more true for you? And to help you answer this question, I want to ask you another one: Does the money still show up if you don't show up? Think about that. Be honest. Does your business still function if you're not there to help drive new leads, if you're not there to help close sales, um, if you're not there to make sure that your customers and clients are happy? If the answer is no, then it's time to admit that you don't own your business, your business owns you. You don't really have, I mean, what what you actually have is a job. And and the truth is, you kind of got a crappy job at that, with kind of a crappy boss who's likely going a little bit crazy. And I say that not to judge you, I say that because I've been there. And I say that because we hear it all the time from our newer clients, as well as our portfolio partners, the companies and the the the CEO that are at the companies that we acquire, invest in. Um, these are some of the most popular, most common quotes that we've heard when onboarding and and talking to new partners and new clients.

We hear things like, "Hey, if my business is growing, then why the heck am I making less money?" Have you thought that? Have you have you thought like, "God, seems like before my business was smaller, I personally made more money. What the heck?" And have you thought to yourself, "No one on my team knows what the heck is going on, including the smart ones who supposedly should?" Or, you know, if you ruminated, thought like, "I liked it better when things were smaller." Do you get frustrated that all you do is put out other people's fires all day long? Said this before, "I don't own my business, my business owns me." We hear it. "I never get to see my family. Everyone gets to take a vacation, everyone gets to clock out at 5:00, except for me." Does this sound familiar?

If it does, and this is really, really important, I want you to know you're not alone. As entrepreneurs, this is when we start to feel trapped in our own businesses. This is even when we begin to resent our own businesses. And that can be a really, really, really bad thing. So if you've thought these thoughts, if you've felt these feelings, I want you to know two things: Number one, you aren't broken, okay? You are not broken, and your business isn't broken. We're going to talk about this later, but you wouldn't be feeling this if you hadn't already experienced a fair degree of success. If you are feeling these things, it is likely because you did the right stuff. It is because your business, business has grown. It's it's because you got what you thought you wanted, right?

And I should know, right? When I started my first business, my goal was not to get rich. It was not. Looking back, I I didn't even realize I was starting a business. And maybe the same was true for you. You you were like, "Just woke up one day and I'm like, 'What the heck? How did this business get here?'" For me, it's really simple. I met a girl, right? My business started when I met a girl. And I knew within a couple of weeks of dating this girl that she was probably the one woman I was going to marry. Now, as a side note, I did not tell her that at the time. I recognize how creepy that would have sounded. But I knew, just intuitively, I knew this is the woman that I am going to marry. And where did my brain go next? It went to, "Huh, marriage proposals involve diamond rings. Diamond rings are expensive. And oh yeah, crap, I'm broke." For the first time in my life, I wanted more. It was this series of realizations that was my first motivation. It was my first why. And and since I was a full-time student and I had a part-time job that was basically taking up all my time, it was getting me food, it was getting me shelter, but it wasn't getting me a whole heck of a lot more. So I knew my only option for making additional income was to start a business. So that's what I did. I launched my first business from my college dorm room in 1999.

Now, fast forward a couple of years, and it worked. I got the ring, uh, I got the girl. And that little dorm room experiment ballooned into a real business. Let me be clear, I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Not at all. Um, you know, people will say, you know, "Ah, do you feel like you were lucky?" Heck yeah. And you probably, if you're being honest, feel the same way too. All I knew is, so I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew it was working.

Now, fast forward a few more years, and our little family expanded. Uh, we welcomed our son into our home. So we went to a family of three, then a daughter, then another daughter, then another little boy. Before too long, I turned around, we were a family of six. And along the way, that little business, that little dorm room experiment, well, it expanded too. Um, for a while, it seemed like I had it all. Had the big house, I had the fancy car, had tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and I had not one, not two, but three different companies simultaneously on the Inc 500 list. My peers respected me, my friends were jealous of me, and my competitors feared me. Could life get any better?

Well, there was just one problem. I was tired. I was burned out. And I was completely and utterly miserable. And as bad as it was for my family. Now, from the outside looking in, things seemed good, right? People would say, like, "Oh, you're so successful," and, "Oh, you know, your business, you're you're crushing it," and, "Oh, you must be so happy." But the reality on the ground was very, very different. Missing soccer practices, dance recitals, and family dinners became the norm. And most nights, I got home after my wife and kids were already asleep. I barely knew my own children, and the reality is, they, they barely knew me.

And one night, things reached, uh, reached a breaking point. I remember, uh, I I returned home after yet another late night at the office. Uh, I tiptoed, as I often, um, you know, got in the habit of doing, got pretty good at doing, tiptoed through the living room, just trying not to wake anyone up. But I remember pulling into the garage, walking through my living room, rounding the corner, uh, to to my bedroom. I remember looking down the hall, and I could see light shining through the crack at the bottom of my bedroom door. And and I just remember thinking, "That's not good. That's not good. She, she should be asleep by now. It's after midnight. Why is she awake?" So I remember slowly opening the door, walking into the room, and there was my wife. Uh, that that same woman who I knew within two weeks of dating that she was the woman I was going to marry. Here she was, sitting up in bed, and it was clear that she had been crying.

I'll never forget, uh, her words for as long as I live. I'm not exaggerating. They're etched into my, into my memory. She said, "You can keep doing what you're doing. Uh, I know who I married. I know I married an entrepreneur. You can keep doing what you're doing, but you can't pretend like you're doing it for us anymore."

Now, it's important to point out, it wasn't an ultimatum. It wasn't a threat. Um, she didn't say I had to stop working. She just simply said that my priorities were out of whack. She held up a mirror in front of my face and said, "Do you like what you see?" She called me on it. Uh, and it was exactly what I needed here in that moment. I mean, remember, I started my very first business so I could buy this woman an engagement ring. She was my very first why. And I was motivated to scale this business because our family was growing. And, you know, one little why after another, after another. Let's face it, kids require expensive things that they need braces and piano lessons, and we want to give them stuff like private schools and Disney vacations, a lot of things that maybe we didn't have when we were kids. And and and so I was supposedly doing all of this for them. But the sad reality is that we were all more miserable than ever. She was right. She was right. And I, I, I will be forever grateful that she had the courage to call, uh, a very just egotistical, you know, and and and frustrated man like me, uh, that she had the courage to call me out, that she loved me enough, uh, to do that. And I, I want to maybe through this video, play a similar role to other people who are watching this. Maybe you don't have somebody in your life who will hold up that mirror, hold up that mirror and say, "Is this what it was all for?" If not, then I want to be that person. Because it changed everything for me, as you're about to see.

And I, I knew, I knew a change needed to occur. And and look, I didn't want to stop being an entrepreneur. I, I didn't want to stop building businesses. It's all I knew how to do. It's who I am. It's probably who you are too. And and so I couldn't just throw in the towel and be like, "Oh yeah, you're right. I guess I'll shut everything down and and go get a quote unquote, you know, real job." I couldn't do that. But I also knew that I couldn't keep doing things the way that I had been doing them. I had achieved a level of success that most entrepreneurs can truly only dream of, but internally, I was spiraling downward, and I was taking my family with me. No amount of success, none, no amount of success was worth the sacrifice I was making, and it certainly wasn't worth the sacrifice I was asking my family to make.

Um, but there's good news, right? The good news is, you don't have to choose between success and freedom. It's not a choice that you have to make. Yes, there are seasons when we need to double down. Yes, when you're getting started, you got to hustle, you got to grind. I get all of that. But that's not how it has to be forever. You do have a choice. And today, I'm pleased to report that my story has a happy ending. My marriage, uh, is strong and loving. My relationship with my kids is better than ever. And without even trying, my business is actually larger and more profitable than ever.

Now, don't get me wrong, life isn't perfect. I, I still miss the occasional soccer games, and I'd be lying if I said I was never late for a family dinner. But that's now the exception. And I am proud of that. It is the exception when I miss a family dinner, not the rule that it once was. And not only do I maintain what most people would refer to as a normal work schedule, including actually taking weekends off, every single summer, the family and I, we take an entire month off as a family to tour around the world and just enjoy some quality time together. The last couple of summers, um, we've spent exploring different parts of Europe. We've been all around the US National Parks, things like that. And I will cherish these times and these summers forever because I know how fleeting they are. Um, that little boy who is my second little why, is now 18, is about to leave for college. I'm so thankful for these moments that we had, and that the business provided for them. It, it didn't remove my ability to take advantage of them.

And I'm also proud of the fact that when I'm off, I'm freaking off, okay? I am off. I'm not checking email. I'm not logging into Zoom, and I'm definitely not attending any meetings. And the best part is, I'm not missed. I mean that. I'm not, I like to think that they miss my general presence and humor and whatnot, but I'm definitely not missed from a productivity standpoint because the business has been built in such a way that it can run and scale without me. Truly, I'm not essential to the business. And that's what I want for you. It's what I want for you. But to achieve that, I had to do something that few entrepreneurs will ever do: I had to upgrade my company's outdated operating system.

And I use the term "upgrade" there very intentionally because whether you realize it or not, your business already has an operating system. Now, in case you're unfamiliar with the term, uh, an operating system is a single source of truth that documents what a company does, how it does it, and the progress it's making towards its stated goals and objectives. Now, that's kind of a fancy term, but you should know that this is not like just some definition that I invented. I, I actually Googled "operating system," you know, and and what Google told me is that an operating system is a set of algorithms, it is a common language, and it is desired outputs, right? In other words, the operating system is that underlying source code. Here's what the company does, here's how it does it, here's the progress it's making towards its stated goals and objectives.

So if we look at the literal definition of an operating system, you can see here that it's made up of three things. And in a moment, I'm going to show you all the different tools that encompass our scalable operating system and how they fit into these three areas: set of algorithms, your process and standard operating procedures; common language, your scorecard, your meeting rhythm, what is that, the user interface of your business; and then desired output, your goals and your objectives. We're going to get into all of these.

Because the problem is, most businesses are still operating on the very first version of their company OS, and it is an operating system that we now refer to as a UOS. And we, we use the term UOS because for most businesses, you, the founder, are the operating system. And the operating system is you. You know how to attract and convert new customers and clients, you know how to deliver a valuable client experience, you know the metrics that matter and the goals that you're pursuing, and you are the one who knows where all the bodies are buried. Simply put, you're the only one who knows how everything works. And because of that, your business is completely dependent upon you.

Now, let me be clear, in the early days, that was fine, right? When your company was still small and simple, that was totally fine. But now that your business is larger, a UOS, that you operating system, it's no longer enough to power it. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that your business has outgrown you, or that you're no longer up to the task. And please, I'm begging you, please don't think that I'm suggesting that you need to fire yourself and bring in "quote unquote" adult supervision, like a lot of the bankers and private equity types would have you believe. I'm going to say it again: You're not broken, okay? You are not broken, and your business isn't broken. You just need a new operating system.

And I mentioned this before, but this is actually a good thing. It's a really, really good thing. Just like a computer needs to upgrade its operating system as they get faster and more powerful, your company operating system needs an upgrade as it grows in size and complexity. To state it as plainly as possible, your operating system doesn't need an upgrade because you did something wrong. Your operating system needs an upgrade because you did something very, very right.

Now, it took my partners and I far too long to come to this realization. But now that we have, I'm going to walk you through how we built and installed our upgraded and scalable operating system. But before I get into the step-by-step of how we build and install operating systems, um, if you've seen enough so far and you're ready to book that demo call that I referenced earlier, uh, there's no need to wait until the end of this video. You can book a call with my team right now. Again, the link should be down in the description to find out more about what it's like to work with us to build and install a custom operating system in your business. And remember, this is a demo call, this is not a sales call. Uh, our success rates are so high at The Scalable Company because we are super selective about the clients we work with. So our main goal in this demo session is to learn more about you and your business, while also answering all of your questions, so that we can both make an informed decision. If we mutually agree that it's a fit, uh, we can discuss next steps. But there is no risk whatsoever, ever, to booking a call to discuss how we can custom tailor a scalable operating system for your business. And I promise, by the way, you're going to get a lot from the conversation, um, even if we choose not to move forward. I promise, promise, promise, we will always leave you, uh, better than we found you. And, um, so if you're interested, um, like, definitely go ahead, book that demo session.

Now, if you are interested, but you're maybe considering some alternative solutions, or maybe you've even tried some alternative solutions, I think it's worth discussing five things we tried that just flat out did not work. Because before setting, uh, you know, settling in on a on an operating system as the ultimate solution, which I, I hope you do, um, we, and and maybe you, tried five other things that, like I said, flat out did not work. So in an effort to save you from repeating my same mistakes, here are all the five things that we tried, and that you might have tried, or maybe you're thinking about trying, that either didn't help or that actually made things worse.

And the first thing, and this sounds a little bit obvious, but it's one where most people start: becoming more productive did not work. Okay? Becoming more productive did not work. Now, to be clear, I'm not afraid of hard work. Back in my prime, 80-hour work weeks were the norm, and 100-hour weeks were not out of the question. I worked nights, I worked weekends. I could say I worked sun up to sun down, but the reality is, I started working before the sun came up, and I was still working when the sun went down. My output was legendary. I could outwork and outproduce anyone in the company two to threefold. By anyone's standards, I wasn't just busy, I was productive. But here's the problem with productivity: you still only have 24 hours in a day. And eventually, you do need to eat and sleep.

So I read all the time management books, and I tried every productivity tool, every app, every planner on the market, and it was never enough. And and the harder I worked, the faster it seemed that the to-do list, the different to-dos, just filled my list. That's when I realized I had it backwards all along. As a business owner, my job is not to do more. It's actually to do less. I had a good friend and mentor tell me one time, "Do you realize the more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is?" I'm going to say it again because it's so important: The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. Now, that can sound strange at first, but if you really think about it, you have to admit that it's true. Even if you never intend to sell your business, a good determination of its value is what someone else is willing to pay for it. And for most business owners, we have to admit that without us, our company really isn't worth very much, unless we're willing to go work for the new owner, which frankly, is a circle of entrepreneurial hell that I have no intention of visiting.

So for this new operating system to work, it couldn't require more of me. I couldn't give any more of me, so it couldn't take more of me. It could take more of my time. In a very real sense, it needed to replace me. That's exactly what it did. So if you're thinking, "Oh, if I could just be more productive, that'll help," no, it won't. We want to do the opposite. So being more productive didn't help.

Second thing that did not help: Creating checklists and standard operating procedures for everything did not work. Now, this may sound a bit counterintuitive because we're talking about operating systems, and a lot of people say, "Oh, operating systems, you mean creating checklists and SOPs for everything, right?" No, that is not what I am talking about. It's not what I'm referring to. It's a component of it, but it is not the most important part by any stretch of the imagination. And I had to learn this out. I had to learn this one the hard way, fairly early in my career. I had a well-intentioned entrepreneurial friend tell me that I needed to start reading books like "The E-Myth Revisited" if I wanted to to learn how to build a quote unquote real business. And I want to be clear, I'm not knocking that book, I think it's great. But the ideas and it's not just in that book, it's in all these books that are in this same business systems and operations, small business, entrepreneurial operations genre. The ideas are solid, but the recommendations basically boil down to the same thing: document everything that everybody does into checklists and standard operating procedures so your business can run like a well-oiled machine, then throw some meetings on top of it and call it done, right? But basically, step one: document literally freaking everything.

Well, guess what? I tried that. I tried that. I literally shut down my entire company for a full month. No new projects, no new hires, nothing until absolutely everyone in the company had documented absolutely everything that they did. Now, I want to be clear, no one was happy about this. No one was happy. We had like, half the team that were freaked out thinking they were going to get fired, and the other half was pissed off that we were asking them to document stuff that they already, quote unquote, knew how to do. So I barely escaped an all-out mutiny. But I pressed on, was able to convince everybody to to to rally around. And by the end of the month, we finally had it. We had what I had always wanted, and what I thought was the answer to everything: a bookshelf full of beautifully tabbed, color-coded binders that detailed all the process and procedures that everyone performed at the company. There was just one problem: literally no one, and this is not an exaggeration, literally no one ever looked at these standard operating procedures. Not once. Not ever. It was the single biggest waste of time, busy work project in company history. And we saw zero gains and zero improvements in efficiency. And funny enough, it wasn't until I had completely forgot these things even existed until we moved offices a couple of years ago, again, not exaggerating, the binders were literally covered in literal dust.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that checklists and SOPs don't have a place in a company's operating system. They absolutely do, and I'm going to show you where that place is. Sequence matters, proportion matters, all this matters. They have a place. But what I'm definitely suggesting is the way most business gurus tell you to create them is flat out wrong. They have you do it at the wrong time. They have you document way too dang much. It just isn't worth it, and it doesn't work.

So for our operating system, we decided to that that we were going to have two rules right from the start: Number one, we would document only the most critical tasks, not everything. If it wasn't truly critical, we wouldn't document it. Now, obviously, you got to know what's critical versus what isn't. I'll show you that in just a second. But that was rule number one: only the critical, not everything. Number two, all documentation would be created while someone was doing their job, not as an additional task or work project. And your people are busy enough. You are busy enough.

Now, again, like I said, I'm not knocking "The E-Myth." It's a great book. But if you think that you need to document everything to have an operating system, I have good news: you don't. You don't, not if you do it our way. So what have we covered? Being more productive doesn't help. Document everything definitely doesn't help, it made things worse.

Here's another thing that didn't help: hiring quote unquote rock stars and A-players. Hiring more people, just throwing human beings at the problem, did not work. Now, this one flies in the face of what all the experts and quote unquote gurus preach. When they say things like, "All problems are people problems, and there's no such thing as a 'how' problem, there are only 'who' problems." Now, fortune cookie musings like these may get you a follower on social media, but in the real world where we're living in, you know, it just doesn't work, right? The "just hire A-players and everything will work itself out" advice, it wasn't cutting it.

First of all, and this is for me, and it's probably true for you as well, I just flat out couldn't afford to make a bunch of new major hires. This idea of like, "Oh, just hire a bunch of people, have them do it." Okay, freaking magician, right? How are we going to do that? Cash flow is always too tight. We're in this constant chicken and egg thing of, "Yeah, we need more people to do the work, but we can't afford them." So, "just go hire some people." That doesn't necessarily acknowledge the reality on the ground.

Second, let's say I do hire them, then what? I don't have time to train them. I don't have time to onboard them. Remember, I'm trying to do less work. So finally, and I think this is important, we already tried it. I, I spent a decade throwing human beings at problems. It's like they would arrive, like, "Welcome to the team." I'd pick them up by their head and I would fling them at the problem that I couldn't solve myself. It never worked. Time and time again, I would watch as talented people who genuinely cared were just chewed up and spit out in the machine. And it's important to note, it wasn't their fault, right? I was the one that was setting them up for failure. And this became increasingly apparent when these same people who failed at my company absolutely thrived in their next company. That's when I came to the following realization. Got another writer-downer for you here: Good people don't fix broken systems. Broken systems break good people. Say it again: Good people don't fix broken systems. Broken systems break good people.

So yes, you want to hire great people. Who doesn't? But as a business owner who values both success and freedom, your objective is not to build a team of rock stars and A-players. Your objective is to build a company that doesn't require them. So yes, we want great people, but we got to solve for systems first. Because if we don't have good systems, great people are going to fail. If you have great systems and you have great people, everything works. If you have great systems and just kind of okay people, guess what? Things work pretty well then too.

Now, fortunately, and and you're about to see exactly how we do this, but what I would kind of like to mention as an aside is that the best people, like, you want to have the rock stars and the A-players, whatever the heck that even means. If you want those people, like I said, we all do, guess what? They want to work for the best companies. So by focusing on systems first, by building a company that doesn't require great people, it's actually going to make it a lot easier to recruit and and retain the best talent. So you're going to wind up getting everything, as long as you solve for systems first, okay?

Thing number that didn't work: hiring an integrator. Now, this one might get me into a little bit of trouble, but it needs to be said. The idea that you can make one magical unicorn hire who will do all the dirty work for you while you just vision all over the place is a laughable, dangerous lie. Now, don't get me wrong, I get why entrepreneurs want to believe this. Heck, I wanted to believe this. And more than once, I've attempted to make such a hire whose job title was something along the lines of, "Oh, you are now my integrator." What does that mean? It means you do all the stuff that I don't want to do.

But I want you to ask yourself, have you ever actually seen it work? I mean, sure, there are instances where you have two co-founders, and one of them is more of an operator, the other one is more of the visionary, and and it works. But aside from a founder-co-founder relationship, I have seen more integrators crash and burn at entrepreneurial companies than literally any other role. And here's why: If you hire an operator, and that really is the term, by the way, the term is operator, if you hire an operator before you have an operating system in place, one of two things is going to happen.

Number one, the operator will attempt to create their own operating system based on what they believe the company does and how they do it. Now, when this invariably differs from the way that you actually do it, what are you going to do? You're going to swoop back in, you're going to undermine their efforts, and they'll either quit or you'll fire them in six to nine months. Ask me how I know. So they're either going to try to build an operating system, not have everything that you know, fail, and then they quit, or you fire them. That's scenario one.

Scenario two, the operator realizes that they don't have a system to work from, and so they just sit around waiting for you to tell them what to do. You'll eventually get frustrated that they just aren't taking charge, and you'll either fire them, or you'll accept the fact that you're basically paying $150,000 to $200,000 a year for a glorified executive assistant. Again, ask me how I know.

Now, I want to be clear on something. I'm all for you eventually hiring an operations manager, a VP of operations, a COO, a president, or heck, even a CEO one day. I want you to have that number two on your team who can and will do all the stuff that you suck at or that you just don't want to do. My, the issue that I have is not with the role. My issue is with a sequence. In an ideal world, you should have an upgrading, an upgraded operating system, I.E., not a UOS, in place before you hire your first executive-level operator. Now, if you already have an operator that's

Fine. I'm not telling you to go, you know, fire them until you get this in place. But if you already have an operator, and especially if they're kind of floundering, then your first order of business should be to collaborate with your operator to build this operating system so that it meets the standards that you have set. Either way, no operating system, no operator.

Okay, last thing, number five. The last thing that did not work in this, this is the one that most entrepreneurs think they need to do: more growth, more growth. "If I just, if we could just grow a little bit more, then everything we'll be fine. If we just hit that next, we could afford to make the higher that we need. If we could just get to this point, we could invest in that technology. If we just got to this, we would have some breathing room. If we just had more growth."

Now, look, I am a marketing guy. I am a marketing guy. I'm a sales guy. I'm a growth guy. Not only am I the founder of digital marketer.com and traffic and conversion summit, I also quite literally authored the book on modern digital marketing. I wrote the book, Digital Marketing For Dummies. So I think I know a thing or two when it comes to growth. And for years, I too operated under the delusion that growth fixes everything. "I'll slow down when we finally get to a million in revenue. That million-dollar run rate. Oh, I'll slow down when we get to 10 million. Uh, when we get to 30 million, we'll have all the answers." The goalpost was just always moving because I believed that things would get easier. I actually believed that things would get easier. I believed that they would get simpler when we hit that next growth milestone. But the opposite turned out to be true.

And if you think about it, of course it would. As my business grew, not only did I personally have less and less free time trying to manage all this stuff, but as expenses went up and margins went down, I was also personally making less money, which meant I needed to work even harder, flail around even more, just to take home what I was making when the business was smaller. Clearly, more growth was not the answer.

And this isn't just my opinion. Did you know that the failure rate of Inc 5000 companies, the fastest growing companies in America, is actually higher than the failure rate of normal startups? It's true. According to a study, and I still cannot believe that they released this study, but according to a study, um, done with, uh, by The Kaufman Foundation in coordination with Inc magazine, about two-thirds of the companies that made the list had shrunk in size, gone out of business, or been disadvantageously sold. And in other words, they failed. 67% of the fastest growing companies in America fail within the first five to eight years.

Now, if you compare this to normal, non-Inc 5000 listed companies, the failure rate after five years, believe it or not, is only 48%. Now, I know a lot of people think, "Oh, but like, don't, like, 95% or 98% of companies, small businesses fail." Yeah, yes, that's true if you zoom out 10 years. If you just go out five years, though, the failure rate is 48%. Now, Inc 5000 companies, 67%. Inc 5000 companies actually fail at a higher rate than their non-Inc 5000 counterparts. Clearly, growth doesn't fix everything.

And for me, this sad statistic is all too real. Remember when I said earlier that I had not one, not two, but three different companies simultaneously on the Inc 5500 list? Well, sounds cool. And when I go and speak at events, I'll often get introduced as a multi-Inc 5000 founder. Well, it sounds impressive until you realize that out of those three companies, one crashed and burned completely, out of business. One was disadvantageously sold to a competitor. And one was, and still is, a massive success. So three companies hitting the Inc 55,000 list, two of them failed, one of them was a massive success. And I can recount all the gory details about all these different businesses, but I'll just give you the punchline: the difference between Company One, which succeeded, and Companies Two and Three, which didn't, is Company One actually had an operating system.

Now, it wasn't anywhere near as sophisticated as the operating system I'm about to show you, but it had one. In the case of Company Two and Company Three, the co-founder, the business partner, the CEO of that business, would not get out of their own way. Or systems were so non-existent, people were flailing around so much that it's, you know, at some point, the duct tape and bubble gum will come loose if it's holding a rocket ship together. And Company Number Three, it just scaled too quickly. The saddest thing about that is we literally had to lay 180 employees off just a few weeks before Christmas. Not because we wanted to. We wished we could have waited until after the holidays. We just simply could not afford to pay them, so we weren't going to ask them to work. And that business was ultimately, the assets were sold for pennies, and it was the highest rated on the list.

So I lived the 76% Inc 5000, uh, failure rate. Right? I lived it. And so that's why I know better than most that more growth is not the solution. If my business was going to scale without me having to sacrifice my soul in the process, I was going to have to shift. I was going to have to shift my focus from the growth at all cost mindset to a systemize to scale mindset.

So let's talk about what we did. Let's talk about how we did it. Let's talk about how you build a scalable operating system in your own business. Now, inside the report, I go into massive depth and detail on the different steps and processes, so that's there. I'd recommend if you haven't downloaded it yet, uh, to to go ahead and do it. You'll be happy that that you did. You'll have an opportunity to to read as I go through and explain it. But rather than kind of just, you know, read and go through what's here, I want to show it to you.

So what you're looking at here is the flowchart for how we go about building operating systems. So let's go through this together. I mentioned before, if you recall, the definition of an operating system: it's three things. It is a set of algorithms. It is your common language, your user interface. It is desired outputs. And across these three categories that make up your operating system, we have six tools. So tool number one, value engines. Number two, your playbook library. Number three, your high output team canvas. This is what forms your set of algorithms. Uh, there's your company scorecard, common language, meeting rhythm is common language, desired output.

So let's dig in and let's look at all of these, starting with the very first phase, which is to systemize execution. So in this phase, our goal is to automate the doing of your job. And this is so important. We've got to get you out of the weeds. We've got to allow you to exit the day-to-day so that you can, frankly, focus on the bigger, higher leverage things. So the way that we're going to do it, we're going to visualize, uh, how your company creates value. We call these value engines. Then we can look at creating processes and SOPs. Then we can assign critical tasks and activities to team members.

So step number one is what you're seeing here. These are what are known as value engines or value flow maps. And what they actually do is they visualize the flow. This is an example. All companies need to have at least two. They need to have a growth engine, which you see here, and a fulfillment engine. Growth engines visualize how customers happen. So this is an example of one of ours. Um, it's actually a slightly more complicated example of one of our, of one of our growth engines. There's also fulfillment engines that, that detail what do you do once a sale is made, right? So great, a sale is made, then what? If you think about it, though, once you have mapped your growth engine, once you've mapped the fulfillment engine, what you know have is a visual map of your entire customer journey. You have a visual map of how you create value. This is the difference maker. This is what nobody else does that we do. And when we work with our clients one-on-one, we, this is where we spend the bulk of our time in the first couple of weeks is getting these mapped. Because once these are mapped, everything else happens so quickly. Everything else just flies. You get massive, massive clarity.

Now, somebody comes and works for your business. If they're in sales and marketing, you could say, "Hey, good news. Uh, this is how this is our exact process for how we acquire new customers and clients. And you know, you, Mr. Salesperson, you're going to work in this part. And hey, marketers, you're going to be responsible for this. This is where you live."

So step one, map value engines. We want to map at least one growth engine, at least one fulfillment engine. The way you do this is fairly simple, by the way. All you do is you just ask yourself, let's say in the case of a growth engine, how does awareness happen? What is the triggering event? What's the first step and stage? So it could be that you run Facebook ads. Um, maybe you've got a house email list. So we want to figure out what's the first step. We also want to figure out where does it end. Growth engines typically end at the sale. So once we figure out the first step, once we know the end, we have scope. We go back to the beginning. We say, "Okay, great. So in this case, um, Facebook, Instagram ads, once somebody sees that, then what happens?" Well, then they're going to go to a lead magnet landing page. Okay, great. Then what? Well, it depends, right? It depends. Like, if, if they're qualified, then they're going to go here. And if they're not, then they're going to go here, right? And, and so these different diamonds represent the different stakes in there. And that's, that's how the process works.

So again, in the report, which is linked up inside the description, um, I do go through the process. But I wanted to show you this because what you're seeing here, this is actually the process that we go through, right? It's nothing super complicated. What, what you're seeing when you look at these is the end result. What you're looking at here is the process and how it's done. We use sticky notes and a whiteboard. It doesn't require fancy tools. It doesn't require fancy training. If you've got sticky notes, if you've got Sharpies, and if you got a whiteboard, you too, uh, with our help, can absolutely map your value engine. So that is the first step. We've got to do this. Like I said, this is what nobody else is doing, but it is so incredibly important because this is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

Because once we have these built, then we can say, "Okay, which of these steps and stages can we absolutely positively not afford to screw up? We cannot mess it up." These are what we refer to as power stages. Power stages are high stakes, so they're really important, but also a high chance for human error. High stakes, high chance for human error, that's a power stage. These are critical stages. We do not want to screw them up. Therefore, we need to document playbooks for them. We need checklists and SOPs.

So I said before that you don't need to document everything, and that's true. But you do need to document a few things inside of your playbook library. But as you can see here, for most of our clients, they might have 10 to 20, some might have 25 checklists they need. They rarely have 30, and nobody has hundreds. We have businesses that are doing 30, 40, 50, $80 million a year that are going to have 10, 15, 20 playbooks documented. I'll say it again: you don't have to document everything. You don't want to document everything. If you try to document everything, you're going to waste everybody's time. And then if you have so much documented, nobody will find it, so they won't use it. We only document the critical. How do we know what's critical? We map our value engines and we ask, "Which of the steps and stages can we not afford to screw up?" If you have not yet mapped value engines, you got no business, none whatsoever, creating playbooks, checklists, and SOPs.

Now, once we have our playbooks, now we can ask a new question, but similar to the last one. Previously, we said, "Okay, what are the steps and stages that we can't screw up?" Now we're going to say, "Who is uniquely responsible for these?" This is again, what makes our process different from everybody else's. We don't start with our team members and say, "What does this person do? What does Jan do? What does Charlie do?" No, we don't do that. We start with our value creation process. And for each step, for each stage, we will say, "Who does this? How about this one? Who's responsible for this one? Who, or whom, right? Who's going to make sure that all of these different steps and stages take place?" And then each time we have an answer, we go back to our, this tool that we call the high output team canvas, and we will assign what we refer to as a critical accountability bullet to the different team members based on what came up.

So you can see here, Carly is responsible for, um, establishing benchmarks and success for the customer care apps, follow-up with customers. All of these would have come from auditing a value engine like the one that you're looking at here. So just like I said before, if you haven't done this step yet, you have no business creating checklists and SOPs. If you haven't done this step yet, it's also going to be really, really, really difficult to get clear on who in your team does what. Because if you ask the people, they're going to tell you what they do. Do they're not going to tell you what they should be doing. And there's no way for you to tell them the most important aspects of their job.

Here's when this gets a lot of fun. When you go through this process, what you're probably going to find when you get to this, "Okay, so we get a sale. Who sends a client agreement? Me. Who makes sure the agreement is signed? Me. Who follows up if it's not? Me. Uh, who's going to create the client dashboard? Me. Who, who's going to set all this stuff? I got to do that too. Who's going to send the welcome email? I'll have my assistant do that. Okay, fine, somebody else." But most of the time, when we go through these with clients, it's me, me, me, me, or it's the same names over and over and over again. That becomes very, very visual when you map it on the high output team at canvas. It becomes very clear. As is the case here, we've got Carly who is quite overwhelmed. And yet now we've also have Betty who only has one thing. So we could probably create a lot more capacity just by having Carly train Betty on certain aspects of her job, right? Or maybe we need to hire an additional Carly. Maybe we need to promote Carly to manager.

When you start with, "This is how we create value," there's no more busy work. And everybody's clear on the tasks and activities that matter the most. They're crystal clear on the tasks and activities that matter the most. And it gives you the ability to to hand off different pieces and and inform your hiring plan. So if you want to say, "Like, I'm so busy, how do I do less?" Figure out all the critical things that you're doing. Start handing them off, one critical accountability bullet, effectively one little sticky note at a time. If you do that, this is how teams can scale.

All right, let's keep going. We've got, now that we have our value engines mapped, now that we've documented the critical playbooks, again, it might be five, it might be 10, it might be 20, it's not 30, it's definitely not 100. Now that we've defined the organizational structure, congratulations, you've officially systemized the execution. What does that mean, though? What does that specifically mean for you, practically, tactically, in the trenches? It means that you no longer have to be in those trenches. Like, it means that you can actually step away for a while because you will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that every single critical activity is taken care of. And the second that you hand off all those critical accountability bullets, that's when you're free. And that really is our goal for all of our clients. All of these that are next to your name, we want to get them off of your name through either handing them off to people you already have or through making some critical hires. So that is phase one. That is systemizing the execution.

Now we can move on to phase two, which is to systemize the optimization. So the source code is built, the source code is done. Now what we need to do is design metrics and scorecards and dashboards so that we know the KPIs that need to be improved. And we do need to have some kind of meeting rhythm in place so that optimization becomes a ritual. We need to ritualize optimization so that you're not the one who figures out when things are broken, so that you're not the only person who can fix things.

So how do we do that? Really simple. We're going to go back to these value engines again. You're seeing why those are so important. You're seeing why you probably want to get some help mapping those things. Now, though, we're going to ask the question, "How do we know these are working?" What are the metrics that we need to be tracking to know that each and every one of these steps and stages, all these different steps and stages, what are the metrics that we need to track to know that they're working?

Now, if you're talking about your growth engine, it could be things like, how many visitors hit this page? What was the conversion rate of that page? Page, um, what, you know, what was the time? I mean, every one of these is going to inform different metrics. And so what we're going to do is we're now we can use these to create scorecards. These different scorecards now are going to be informed by not vanity metrics, not, "Oh, we would like to track this." We are going to pick the metrics that we track based on, "How do we know that the different steps and stages of our value engines are working?"

Now, this becomes simple because, again, what did I say that this is a map of? This is a map of the customer journey flow. This one at the top, this is a map of how customers and clients happen. If, if this is just flowing through and everything is hunky-dory, then you're getting a lot of customers. This one down in clients, this one down here is a map of fulfillment. If everything is good and and clients are and customers are flowing through this without any bottlenecks, then you're doing a great job serving your customers and clients. But if there's a bottleneck in your growth engine, then guess what? You're not getting as many leads and customers and clients as you should get. If there's a bottleneck somewhere in your fulfillment engine, you probably have some refund exposure, you definitely have some grumpy clients. That's not good for your brand. So we need to know how they're working.

And so what we do, really, really simple. And we'll have growth scorecards, company-wide scorecards. But this gives me a single scorecard that I can look at at the company level, and it's very easy for me to see what's working and what isn't. For example, like I can see right here, this particular, um, business, video views are down. I know that because it's red. The green, I don't really need to look at all that much. Um, the number of people opting in for our challenge, our cost per lead is too high. At a single glance, I know what's working.

Now, if you have tried to build metrics and dashboards in the past, a, and you found that it didn't really work, you know, all that well, you didn't use them, I submit to you that it's because the metrics you were tracking did not mirror the customer journey. If the metrics you're tracking mirror the customer journey, I guarantee to you, they're going to be metrics that matter and they're going to tell a story. Um, we're also big believers, if you notice, this is not fancy, expensive software. For us, across all of our companies, and this includes, again, the larger eight-figure businesses, they still use Google Sheets to track this. And this is important. This is the one everybody fights me on. See all this data here? All this data is input manually. Now, people want to say, "Oh, isn't that a lot of work?" It really isn't, right? It's not a lot of work at all. But when you ask your team, like you ask Fran, and you ask John, and you ask Frank, and Tom, you ask the people who own these metrics, if you ask people who own these metrics to come in every Monday and to fill them in each week, just once per week, it takes about 30 minutes per person. If you're following our, our system and process, they go in and fill this in.

Now, what they're going to do is they're going to look at, "Where are we right now in terms of actual?" So I can see here, okay, meetings completed, um, the goal was to do 150, looks like we're only doing 112. Ah, that's behind. Now, what they're going to start doing is they're going to show up, show up to the meeting with a plan. And the reason they're going to do this is through the magic of color coding. Now, if you notice, we're using red, we're using yellow, we're using green. Here's what these colors mean. Red, right? Let me start at the top. Green, green is we are ahead or right on target when we compare the monthly actual to the monthly target. All good, we are green. Yellow is behind, but with a plan. So as you can see here, meetings completed is behind, but it looks like Frank has a plan or some some notes for why that happened and how it's going to get back into the green. So if you're behind, but you got a plan for catching back up, you're yellow. If you're behind, but you don't have a plan, you're red.

What we found is that team members do not want to show up to meetings with red metrics. They would much rather show up for yellow metrics, which means they show up to the meetings, number one, knowing their numbers, and number two, actually having a plan for fixing, for improving, for optimizing their, their, their metrics. And that makes all the difference in the world. Um, if you don't just want data, if you want your team bringing you ideas and insights, set up scorecards like the way that we do it and have them enter their data manually. You are, however, also going to need to have a regular meeting rhythm.

Now, I get it. You hate meetings. I hate meetings. Most people hate meetings. The truth is, I love meetings, um, because meetings for us at our companies are some of the most productive times that we spend as a, as a team every week. And that's because we follow a regular meeting cadence that you see right here. And all of our meetings are going to have some associated scorecard. So I've got a rule: no scorecard, no meeting. Now, we've got a very clear meeting rhythm that we follow. I go through it in the report. I'm not going to dwell on it here. The important thing is you do need to meet as a team. It is, it's very popular right now for businesses to say, like, "Oh, we're a meeting-free place." I don't know a single team that achieves any gains that doesn't meet regularly and collaborate. So you need to do it. You probably don't need to do it as often as you're meeting right now. Uh, we want you to have less, but better meetings. We'll show you exactly how we do that. We've got a tool for that. But just as a hint, the key is you got to have scorecards. If you're not there talking about real data, and if people aren't showing up to the meeting with ideas to discuss, then it's just going to be a lot of posturing. It's just going to be a lot of waste of time.

Okay, so we have now systemized the execution. We've systemized the optimization. And here's the cool thing: when you start showing up for these meetings and you find that your team is effectively turning red to yellow and yellow to green, they're showing up with ideas for how to get back on track, and you're like, "Those ideas sound pretty good." Guess what? You don't have to go to those meetings anymore. For me, at, you know, all of my different companies, as a general rule, I'm going to attend the clarity days for a new company that happens once every three years. I can afford to take some time off of that. I will typically attend the quarterly sprint planning meetings that occur every 90 days. Those are about half-day meetings. Uh, I may or may not go to the monthly business reviews. It just depends. If I look at the scorecard and I see a lot of red and a lot of yellow, I might. And I almost never attend the weekly team scorecard meetings anymore. And I'm, I'm definitely really never at the ad hoc project kickoff meetings and things like that. Uh, you shouldn't either. That's where we want to get you. We want to get you free from that. So you are free from the doing. You are free from the optimizing. Not only are you no longer the one who sees when things are broken, you're you're no longer the one that has to fix it. Your team is going to fix it because they know the metrics that matter and they don't want to show up to the meetings without an idea for how to fix it.

Okay, uh, management becomes really simple when you're doing scorecard-based management, scorecard-based leadership. So we're man, um, measuring the optimization. The last step is really to systemize scale. The way that we do this is to automate decision-making. To automate decision-making. The tool that we use to do this is a tool called, uh, the clarity compass. And this is where, just on a single sheet, you give your company your decision-making framework. You say, "This is the company case. This is where we're headed. Is this idea, is this decision going to get us closer to or further away from this three-year target?" Yes or no. If yes, great. Now we're going to make the compet, the, um, the customer case, the client case. Does it align with our purpose and our why, right? If it gets us close to our goal and it aligns with our greater purpose, our greater mission, amazing. We're moving towards that. Now, we're going to make, uh, the culture case. As a team, does it align with our core values? If yes, great. Now, we need to make the competitive case. Can we pull it off? The strategic anchors. I submit to you that every single time you make a decision, you are making a decision by considering those four cases, right? You're making a decision by looking at it and saying, uh, does this align with the company case? Does this align with the culture case, uh, with the customer case, the culture case, and the competitive case? These are the decision points that you're making.

If you can give your team a tool, which is what the clarity compass is, for how to make decisions like you believe it or not, they'll actually make decisions as good or better than you because they'll have your decision-making framework. They'll have, and this is really important, the data. And they'll have the in-the-trenches context that you don't have. So we need to give them a framework for decision-making. Uh, we also need to give them clear goals and objectives. So that's where the sprint canvas comes into play. So this is the tool that we use to plan out our 90-day, uh, sprints, which again, is talked about right here in this sprint planning a piece that you see right there. Also, we need to give them the longer-term view and perspective. So this is a tool that we, um, help our clients, uh, build and create and share with their teams, where you give that three-year vision, that, that three-year picture, where do we want to be in terms of, where are we now, where do we want to be in three years in terms of sales and profitability, and how do we get there, quarter over quarter?

Now, the cool thing is, is once that is done, what you're now able to do, 'cause you've got it, you, you got a team that's executing on your behalf, you've got a team that's optimizing on your behalf, and you've got a team that can actually make decisions and lead as good or better than you would. You have a team that is not just managing itself, it is scaling itself.

The last step of this equation, it's the, that, that next phase is to, um, package it up. Package up into one place, one operating system. Whether you're using, uh, Google Docs or using Notion or some other tool, again, we, we help our clients do this. We're tool agnostic, but there needs to be one place. An operating system is not a concept. An operating system is a thing. So for example, uh, I'll let you look behind the scenes. This is, let me move my head out of the way. Um, this is our company operating system. This is behind the scenes to our actual operating system, our actual, uh, key initiatives. Um, anybody from the team can click over here and they can see the goals. They can see get a link to the scorecard. Uh, they can view our sprint plans now, and the ones we've done in the future. They can see the key initiatives. They're able to go and access all of our different company value engines. They're here. So nobody can say, um, "Oh, how, how does that work again?" Um, same with the playbooks. They're all here. They're all accessible as well. Um, and, and even when it comes to the team directory, everybody has the ability to look and know who on the team does what, who's responsible for what.

Now, there's more here, um, that, beyond just the things that, that, that I had talked about, but this piece right here, what you're looking at here, this is what we help our clients create. It's what we build in all of our portfolio companies, and it is what I want for you as well. So if you like this, if you've, if you're seeing value from this, if you're thinking, "Wow, I do think that that could make a difference. I do believe that my life as an entrepreneur would be better if my company didn't just run itself, but it scaled itself, um, without me." I'd like to see that. I'd like to have one of these put in place. Um, then let's talk next steps and get into the actual process of making that happen. Because at this point, certainly, if you've been watching for this long, I would like to formally invite you to book a demo session with my team to discuss building and installing one of these scalable operating systems.

Um, what you're looking at right here, getting one of these built and installed in your business. Now, due to the one-on-one and the custom nature of this, we can only work with a handful of founders and CEOs at the time. But if you're a business owner whose company is generating typically more than between two million and 50 million, I, I want to be clear, we, we've worked with businesses that are a little bit smaller, we've certainly worked with larger businesses, but we have found that that $2 to $50 million revenue, that is the sweet spot. That's kind of when you're in no man's land one, or you're in no man's land two. So that's what we're looking for. 10 plus employees. So again, we're not talking about startups here. Two to 50 million, 10 plus employees, and your goal is to exit the day-to-day grunt work. Right? If you do see time and getting some time and getting some freedom as important. It's not just about grow, grow, grow at all costs, although this will absolutely help you grow, by the way, it will help you scale. But if your focus right now is, "I want to exit the grunt work. I want to get out of the day-to-day so I can focus on those high-level tasks, or heck, just take a break." Really good chance that we can help.

We have already created scale and freedom for founders and CEOs of B2B service firms, professional service firms, home services companies, construction companies, e-commerce, software, SAS, retail, direct to consumer. You name the business, we have done it. If you're a business owner who's stuck in marketing, if you're stuck in sales, if you're stuck in fulfillment, or if you're stuck in all of the above, we can help.

So for the rest of this report, what I want to do right now is just break down how our process works, how you can get started, and what you're going to get by working with us. The first thing I want you to know is that this does actually work. Okay? It does. If I can leverage the scalable operating system to scale six different companies simultaneously in a $200 million holding company, without getting stuck in endless meetings, without being enslaved in my email inbox, without enduring, uh, the endless shoulder taps and gotcha minutes, and without burning out, all while taking at least one 30-day vacation every single year, then I have to believe this system will help create freedom and scale for you and your business too. But if my story isn't proof enough, you can read and watch, watch some of our client stories on our website, and we'll send you even more. We've worked with hundreds of businesses to do this exact same thing. So we know that it works, and we're very, very confident, uh, that that it's going to work for you.

Um, second, I can't stress this enough. There isn't one thing that makes the scalable operating system work. Now, hopefully, now that you see the six different components and how, how they work together, um, in harmony, hopefully you see how, if even one piece is missing, or if you just get the pieces in the wrong order, the entire machine breaks down, right? If you try to create checklists and SOPs for everything, if you try to give team members critical accountability bullets without creating your value engine, stuff's going to break down. If you have meetings without scorecards, stuff's going to break down. In fact, if you've attempted to systemize your business in the past, you can probably see now why it didn't work. You're either missing a critical component, or you were doing it in the wrong order. This is a complete system. It's not pick and choose. And while we have boiled this process down to an exact science, it could easily take 100 plus hours if you tried to implement it on your own. Now, if you do it with us, I promise it won't take anywhere near that long. Um, if you try to figure this out on your own, I'm not saying you couldn't. Trying to give you the literal map for it, it would just take you a long time. And even if you did pull it off, you wouldn't know for sure what success looked like because you never built or deployed an operating system like this before.

Third, this is not a course. What we are doing is we are licensing you the same system that my partners and I are using to scale our internal portfolio companies. We do not just make all of these tools available to everyone at all times. We are licensing the same tools that you get, and you get to leverage my internal team of experts and facilitators, the same internal team that my portfolio company CEOs have access to, to build and install a scalable operating system in your business. Yes, there is video content in case you are wondering, but the video content is there to accelerate your process, and it's there just to help with training and enabling your own team. It's not there to give you hundreds of hours of videos to go through. You still have to do the work. This is a one-on-one implementation, or one-on-many, because we encourage you to involve and bring your team to this to the process as well. It's also not about learning. Yes, I hope you learn a lot. I really hope you do, and I believe that you will. But this is about building. It's about when we're done, it's not a victory if you go, "Oh, I know so much." We only have one victory if, when we're done, you have an asset capable of running and scaling your business without you.

So let's get into exactly how it works. Now, fortunately, we've talked about a lot of this stuff, so I can, I can breeze through it. But the goal is to get this done in 12 to 16 weeks. We can typically get it done in 12. We allow for 16, and frankly, if you need a little bit of help, need a little bit more time, we can do that as well. The way that we do this is by installing these three key systems that we talked about. There's the value automator. That is the combination of everything that you see here on the top right: your value engines, your, your checklists, and the, the high output team canvas. This is what's going to systemize and automate the core value drivers for your company. So the important work gets done the right way by someone other than you. This is, this is your company source code, right? It's, it's your value, your checklist, it's your SOPs, it's team accountability, so that everyone knows what to do, everyone knows how to do it, everyone knows who's supposed to do it. The result: you no longer have to be in the weeds of your business because your team is doing all the grunt work instead of you.

The next big thing we're going to get to is your CEO dashboard, right? Deploying our team and company metrics dashboards across your entire organization, and then pairing those dashboards with the meeting rhythm that aligns perfectly with your culture, so that everyone knows what needs to be done, everyone knows what needs to be fixed, they know what needs to be optimized, and we ritualize it so that you can opt out of virtually all company meetings, 'cause your team's got it. They've got it. The last big piece is the clarity compass. We want to create and install a decision-making framework that documents your goals, your mission, your values, your key strategic advantages, which is the one that everybody forgets about, by the way, so that everyone knows how to think and act like you do. Now, if you notice, this piece that we do last, it's actually what everybody else does first. If you read most business books that tell you to systemize, they go, "Ooh, start with goal setting." Wrong, wrong, wrong. It doesn't work. Again, ask me how I know. You have no idea what you can achieve until you're clear on how you add value. You have no idea what all you can achieve until you're clear on exactly how to do the step-by-step, and you know how to scale it with great people. You have no idea what you can achieve until you know your numbers. So many people are setting goals without knowing the, the key metrics that are going to drive those goals. Look, that's not goal setting, that's wishing. That's a New Year's resolution, and like most New Year's resolutions, they get, they get abandoned in February, just like most one-year plans. Okay? We want you to have the details, have the specifics, so that when you set a goal, it's backed by systems and it's backed by data. The result is you have the confidence and freedom to step away because you will watch your team set goals, make decisions as good or better than you would, and then hit those goals.

So we want to install these big key systems. It happens in, in a couple of phases. The first phase is the actual build phase. So this is when we're going step-by-step. We, we typically allow two weeks per asset. Some are a little bit faster, so that's where we can speed it up if we need to. Um, but, but we're going to allow time to actually build these out together. Every single one of these different tools will get done in phase one. Um, then we get into phase two. Uh, this is when we actually need to create that dashboard and we need to roll it out to your team. So everything that you see kind of in this outside area, this is all phase one. This piece right here, getting this piece done, this is phase two. And again, you're going to get the exact same tools and templates that we use. We don't charge extra for these things. We just give you the same stuff, um, that, that, that we use because we know that, you know, this stuff is good. But if it just stays in your head, if it just stays with your main leadership team, if it doesn't get rolled out to your team, what we refer to as being installed, it's not going to work, okay? It's not going to move the needle, not going to make a difference. And we want this to make a difference. An operating system is what you need. But just like a computer operating system, if it stays in the box, it's not going to, if, if you never download the update, it's not going to move the needle, it's not going to help. So we're going to create the operating system. We're going to download the operating system into your business so that it gets the upgrade that it needs.

The goal is, is simple: a scalable business that you can exit one day. Whether that means, by the way, completely exiting and selling the company, or just exiting the, the, the day-to-day grunt work that you don't want to do. We got a lot of different ways that we describe exit. Here's what exit means to me: you're not stuck. What exit means to me is you truly own your business. Because if you can't sell your business, if you can't exit your business, you don't truly own your business. Your business owns you. We want to get you to that point. We want to get you there in 16 weeks or less. Either way, when this process is complete, we're going to encourage you to take that 30-day vacation. Even if you decide not to at the end, um, knowing that you have the option is really pretty powerful. Like I said, not only over, probably for some rest and rejuvenation, it's the ultimate test.

Again, this is not a course. I cannot emphasize that enough. This is not a course. This is not a group coaching program. It's not a cohort-based program. You're getting direct one-on-one support in documenting your systems, managing your teams, and all the other aspects of running successful, scalable businesses. You're going to meet bi-weekly with someone on my team, a facilitator, a scalable business advisor. They know these systems and frameworks inside and out. Many cases, they know them better than I do, and they're used to working with businesses that are just like yours. We always like to pair the CEO with the facilitator who knows their business and who knows their industry. They're going to shepherd you and your leadership team through phase one, and their expert one-on-one guidance will ensure that you never get stuck and lose momentum. And then when it comes to phase two, uh, they're going to be there to help you with the goal setting and help you with the actual installation. You and your team also are going to get, uh, real-time support when you need it. We've got a 24/7 client community. We've got twice weekly drop-in calls, kind of like an office hours that you can go to, or your team can go to. The point is, you're never stuck. You're never stuck because you have a team of mentors, facilitators, and advisors there to guide you every step of the way.

The only catch is, due to the one-on-one nature of this program, we only have the capacity right now, as I record this, to take on 20 new clients each month. We're working on our own scale as well, but we want to make sure that the people that are on our team, like I said, they really know this stuff. So we purposefully constrain our capacity so that we can deliver the best result. That, that means though, that we frequently have a two to three-month waiting list. So hopefully this goes without saying, the sooner you book your demo call, uh, the better. If we can fit you in now, we will. Um, if there is a wait, we'll let you know that as well. You know, no secrets here. When you do book that demo call, you'll fill out a few simple questions that will allow us to research your business and just come to the call fully prepared to show you the next steps for installing a scalable operating system in your business. So we're going to make sure we show up prepared. We're going to make sure we show up on time. Uh, my ask is that you do the same, right? When you book the meeting, hold the meeting, and make sure that you're there on time and that you're focused. Um, we're going to invest in you. We're going to ask that you do the same for us.

I'm going to close this out. Look, if you're tired of being owned by your business and you're ready to achieve the wealth, freedom, and impact that you've wanted since day one, you did not start your business because you just needed a job, right? You, you started this business because you wanted freedom, because you wanted wealth, because you wanted impact. You got to have all three. So if that's where you are, take a few minutes, book the demo call while it's still fresh on your mind. If you wait, if you say, "I'll do that later," later equals never. Okay? So go ahead, do it right now. I, I cannot wait for you to see the difference that a scalable operating system can make in your business and in your life. I really know that this can change your business. I know it can change your life because I know that it changed mine, and I've watched it change the lives of so many entrepreneurs. I sincerely look forward to working with you. I sincerely look forward to making that happen, uh, for you, and, uh, I sincerely look forward to to watching you install, uh, a scalable operating system in your own business. Let's do it. Let's do it together. See you there.