Transcription
Have you noticed that every video about books that will change your life and blow up your business is just a list of the CMO books: "Atomic Habits," "Deep Work," and "The 4-Hour Workweek"?
Maybe it's got you thinking, "This can't be it. There have to be other books out there that millionaires and high-level entrepreneurs read."
Well, there are, but you're not going to find them in any standard book lists because those lists are full of watered-down general advice for the mass market.
The books elite entrepreneurs read are far too advanced for any standard list.
But the book I'm about to show you in this video is in a completely different league.
It's so powerful, so impactful, that it's like a secret among elite entrepreneurs, and it's why they don't want to tell you about it.
By the end, you'll not only know what the book is, but you'll know how to use it to transform both your business and your life.
Let's dive in.
So why is this book so different from any other typical business book you see in a YouTube video?
Well, here's the thing: most business advice is designed to be simple, digestible, and widely applicable.
And look, that is great. There is a place for that.
It's great if you're starting out, but if you're looking to build something truly scalable, or if you've already built something good and you're trying to gain back your time and freedom by working less, this generic advice won't cut it.
It's like trying to run a marathon but only following the 5K training plan.
You'll barely get anywhere before you hit a wall.
You see, imagine your business is like a bakery. Stick with me, okay? You'll be fine; it's going to make sense.
You've got all the ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs.
But without a recipe to guide the process, you'll never get the perfect cake.
Business advice often focuses on individual ingredients but rarely helps you understand how to manage the entire system that is your business.
This is why this book is so damn powerful.
It helps you focus on the recipe that connects every single aspect of your business so you can see exactly what needs fixing, optimizing, improving, or dropping without relying on guesswork or being influenced by your emotional bias.
Okay, so what is this magical book I keep talking about?
Well, if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of running a business—managing inputs like cash, people, leads, and time while juggling processes and striving for the right outputs like working less but profiting more—this book is your guide to running the business of your dreams.
It's called "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows.
If you haven't heard of Donella Meadows, her work is pretty legendary.
She was a scientist, a systems thinker, and an author who had an incredible gift for taking complex ideas and making them practical.
In "Thinking in Systems," Donella breaks down exactly how systems work, why they fail, and how to fix them.
And the best part? I read this book for the first time probably two years ago.
At the time, I was studying finance at university while also running my business and trying to grow my brand and all the rest.
I realized the concepts in this book apply to every system, whether it's your business, your life, or even the global economy.
This book teaches you how to see your business holistically—how the inputs, processes, and outputs interact and where the real opportunities and problems lie.
Now, I know what you're thinking: if I haven't heard of this book before, is it really that important for business?
Well, you know the way people say, "Oh, this book changed my life," and then they show you "Atomic Habits"?
And don't get me wrong, "Atomic Habits" is a good book; "Deep Work" is a great book.
They have their place, but when people say they changed their lives, most of the time they're just saying that it didn't actually change their lives.
"Thinking in Systems," from the day I read it, has changed my entire life.
I see literally everything in a system now, and it's all thanks to that book.
It's a reason I've gotten to where I am today, and it's a reason I'm going to go to where I'm going to go.
That book has literally, quite literally—I cannot say this enough—changed my life.
And just let me show you why this book will change everything for you and how to use it.
You see, most people treat their business like a to-do list: get leads, make sales, deliver service.
But a business is not a to-do list.
A to-do list is individual, independent components.
Business, in reality, and even life, is full of dependent components.
The effectiveness of one thing is almost entirely limited by another.
Business is a system, and if you don't understand how the parts interact, you're always going to feel stuck.
You see, in its most basic format, a system is an input, a process, and an output.
It's a cause and effect: one thing happens, and then thing two happens, right?
Whether this is in business, where you post content as an input, people consume your content as a process, and then you get leads as the output—that's your lead generation system.
Or you get leads as an input, they book a sales call as a process, and they sign up for your service on the call as an output—that's your sales system.
Or someone signs up for your service as an input, they get emails and a call going over their next step as a process, and then they use your service to the best degree possible to get results as an output—that is your onboarding system.
So as you can see, everything in your business is an input, a process, or an output, and they all play together to move your business forward toward your goals.
But here's the thing: if we zoom out, your entire business is a system.
You might have also noticed in those three examples that the output of your lead generation system is the input of your sales system, and the output of your sales system is the input of your onboarding system.
Every system within your business connects to form the total system of your business.
Now here's where this gets cool, okay?
Maybe I'm a bit weird for finding this so cool, but anyway, if you think of your business like a pipe—now I've used this analogy before in videos, so if you've seen any of my other videos, you'll be familiar with it—but let's say the goal of this business is obviously to make money.
That is the output at the very end of the pipe.
Then let's say in the pipe, there are multiple sections.
Each section represents a component of an individual system of your business.
So let's use two of the systems that we just went over: your lead generation and sales system.
Your input for the pipe, the very first section, would be content creation.
It's the input of the first system in this context.
The next section would be the people consuming your content.
The next would be leads, the next would be sales calls, the next would be sales, and finally, the output is cash money.
Now, if we represent the flow of people through this pipe as water, the more water—or people—flowing through here, the more water coming out of the end of the pipe, the more money you make.
But if the flow of water is not where you want it to be, well, there's an issue.
Something is stopping it in the pipe.
If you don't think in systems, you'll just think, "Oh, I need to make more sales."
And you might be right; you might need to make more sales, but you might be wrong.
You're just guessing.
When you think in systems, you can look at your pipe, your systems within your business, and see what you actually need to fix.
Maybe you look at your close rate for your sales calls and say, "Oh, you actually close 70% of your sales calls and have a fantastic close rate."
But it's just the volume of your sales calls that is low.
So you go back through the pipe, working from the output to the input, and say, "Oh, you're actually getting loads of leads, but only 10% of them book a call."
So your volume of sales calls is therefore low, and now you know you need to improve your book rate.
If you look at the numbers, if you get, for example, 100 leads a day and only 10% book a sales call, you get 10 sales calls a day with a 70% close rate, which is a fantastic close rate—that's seven sales.
If you improved your close rate by 10%, you now close at 80% and get eight sales a day.
But if you increase your book rate by 10%, you get 20 sales calls a day.
Even if your close rate drops due to the increase in volume and lower chance of highly qualified leads, if it drops by 10% to 60%, you still close 12 sales calls a day—five more than previously.
Now, that's also not considering the fact that if you already have a certain part of your system at a high level, trying to improve it to a higher level is even harder than improving a part of your system that's quite low.
But anyway, this gets into the concept of bottlenecks and leverage, which is above the scope of this video.
But I wanted to show you this example because it perfectly demonstrates how powerful systems thinking is for your business.
If you didn't do systems thinking, you might just keep trying to improve your close rate, which in this example is a pretty low-leverage thing to do because it is not the bottleneck.
In short, your business is a collection of systems, each with inputs, processes, and outputs.
If you can't think in systems, you're not thinking in a way aligned with your business.
But if you do think in systems, instead of throwing money or effort or time at random fixes, you can make strategic changes that unlock massive results.
And guess what? You can profit more while working less.
But the best part? You can apply this approach not just to your business but to your entire life.
So how do you actually start to use systems thinking?
Well, right now, you might feel like your business or life is a juggling act.
You're constantly adding more inputs but not seeing better outputs.
It's exhausting, isn't it?
You're working more and more hours but not seeing the results that you want or that you feel you deserve.
Well, luckily, systems thinking is your solution.
To use it in your life or business, there are a few things you want to do.
Okay, now this is obviously a brief overview, so it's going to be quite short, but there are key components that you need to follow to use systems thinking in your life and business.
The first step is to map out your systems.
So write down the key inputs, processes, and outputs in your business or life.
You can map them out in a flowchart on the likes of Milanote, which I do recommend you do.
You can then create SOPs (standard operating procedures) for them in the likes of Notion or Google Docs to document how you do them for you and your team to improve quality and productivity and to follow them rigorously.
You can then create a Google Sheet for each of them, each system, to track data for that system because that is an absolutely essential part of this process.
If you do not track the data of your systems—how much content you're posting, how many ads you're running, how many leads you get, sales calls you book, show-ups you get, closes you get, etc.—you are quite literally guessing at what is holding you back and what needs to be improved and what's going well and what to double down on.
Data is how you truly think in systems and remove guesswork and emotional bias because without data, you're quite literally guessing.
The second step is to find bottlenecks.
If you're not getting the output you want, look for the relevant system in your Milanote flowchart.
Look at the data for that area in your Google Sheet and see if it's below par.
Each part of your system should have a KPI (key performance indicator), a good standard for it to reach.
If it's not at that standard, it is a bottleneck, and you want to look at your data, see what's below the KPI, and then fix it.
If multiple parts are below KPI, fix the earliest in the system or the one that's furthest from the KPI, as it typically has the most leverage.
Step three: test small changes.
So make adjustments to one part of the system and measure the results.
I would highly recommend noting down in your data sheet when you made the change and what change you made because this way, you can then compare the results before and after to see if the change created the desired outcome.
You can also use it to see if any specific parts of your system are trending downward or upward.
Either way, small tweaks can lead to massive improvements, especially if you're fixing a bottleneck, which is where you're going to have the most leverage for improvement.
Once you start applying these principles and start thinking in systems, you will realize that systems thinking isn't just a framework; it's a game changer.
It's a way to take control of your damn life and business.
It's a way to work less but profit more.
It's a way to build something great.
It's a way to feel fulfilled and get predictable, controllable results.
But the other aspect of taking control of your business is taking control of your time.
Because if you do not own your calendar, if you do not own your time, you do not control your life or your business.
So if you want to know how to make 2025 the most productive year of your life, check out this video right now.