Transcription
Have you spent hours building systems, SOPs, automations, workflows, only to find yourself still stuck working 10 plus hours a day, wondering why your business isn't growing the way you want it to?
Well, after helping countless 6, seven, and 8 figure entrepreneurs systemize both their personal operations and their business, I've seen the same problem at every level. And it's the difference in systems that let you scale in 4 hours a day and systems that just feel like documents nobody looks at.
So, in this video, I'm going to show you what really makes a system work and how you can use it to scale faster whilst you work less. Now, when you hear system, you probably think of SOPs, checklists, maybe a few automations, but that's not actually what a system is. They can be features and parts of your systems. But a real system is essentially a machine for producing results. It's made up of four main components.
Now, the three most basic components are your inputs, your processes, and your outputs. Now, I'll tell you what the fourth component is in a minute, but guess what? Most entrepreneurs don't even know what their inputs are or how their processes flow or what output they're even measuring. And like, if you imagine your entire business is a factory, your input is the raw material. Okay? Your process is the assembly line and your output is the product that is made at the end of that assembly. If you don't know what the raw material is, if you don't know how that raw material is supposed to be put together, assembled, or you don't know what the end product is even meant to be, then how on earth can you run that factory efficiently and effectively? Well, you can't. And the same goes for your business. If you don't know what your inputs are, how the processes flow, and what output you're supposed to measure for each system, how can you expect to scale your business to millions of dollars a year? You can't.
And even if you know what those three components are for your business, if the input is inconsistent or the process is inefficient, or you don't know if the output is good or not, then all you've built is a business that burns your time and energy and gives you no signal. It gives you no freedom. It gives you no reward. But luckily there's a really easy fix and a quick win you can get here and that's to stop thinking about systems as documents and start mapping out your systems which to do that first you have to identify the major functions in your business.
Now every single business has the function of marketing, sales, operations and finance. Some businesses obviously have others but these four are in every business. And then you want to identify the goal of each function which for marketing is to generate leads, sales is to turn leads into customers. operations is to deliver your product or service and finances to manage cash flow and profitability. You then want to list out every task in your business. Yes, every single one. And you want to write out the goal of each task. A mistake I see here quite often is people don't write down the real goal. So, make sure you include the end goal of that task. Like what is the true purpose of it? The best example I can give here is if you create content for your business, you might create content and you might think the goal is to get followers, but really as a business, the goal of creating content is to generate leads. So what you'll notice after you do this is that every task has a goal that aligns with the goal of the functions. So put every task under the function with the same goal. Reorganize the tasks into logical order as in you cannot send a newsletter to your email list until you have people on your email list. Therefore content comes before the newsletter as content is how you'll get people onto your email list. Then for each task write out the steps you have to follow to do that task. Once you've done that you've mapped out your business systems. Now depending on your business that might take 20 minutes or that might take 2 weeks but do that okay obviously that's a brief overview there can be a lot more nuance to that and a lot more steps etc but if you want me to personally guide you on how to systemize your business so you can grow in 4 hours a day click the first link in the description below pay me and I'll help you turn your business and time into something you have complete control over.
But now even once you've mapped out your systems most people still miss the most critical part. The one thing that actually makes the system better over time. And this is the fourth component. The part that is the difference in a system that works in a system that well doesn't. It's the part that turns an okay system into a system that scales your business. It's a feedback loop. Without a feedback loop, your system quite simply becomes steel. You're stuck fixing things based on feelings instead of facts.
For example, I once worked with a founder who built a fulfillment process in their operation system for onboarding coaching clients. Everything looked perfect. Okay. tasks were signed, emails were automated, forms were collected, but something just wasn't right. Clients kept ghosting him after week two. So, he thought it was a sales issue, that it was a mindset issue. Turns out, one of the onboarding steps overwhelmed new clients of like bloody 15 action items in the first day of signing up. So, the clients got confused, weren't clear on what to do when, and so, it set them off in the wrong foot. And one of the most important things in business is clarity and first impressions. A bad onboarding can ruin everything else. even if the entire thing of delivering your product or service is perfect. And guess what? We would not have found that issue without feedback. So, we removed the steps, simplified the process, really focused on clarity, and all of a sudden, clients stopped ghosting in week two. That is the power of a feedback loop. It shows you what the system can't tell you on its own.
So if you want your systems to work, if you want them to actually blow up your business while you work only a few hours a day, you have to embed feedback and mechanisms into every system and every process. Now the best feedback is always going to be metrics and data, which is why scorecards are so important and why you need scorecards and basically a way to track your data for every system so you're not guessing and so you can see objectively what's working and what's not. Now, I've made videos in the past on building scorecards and using them. So, if you want to know how to build a scorecard so you know what's working and what's not in your business at a glance, I will link a video at the end of this of the end of this one that shows you how to do that. But, of course, not everything can be tracked of a metric. So, feedback loops can look as simple as asking your team on a weekly basis, what's not working here? And asking your clients regularly for feedback like where did you feel lost, confused, or frustrated? Now obviously when you're asking for feedback from people it can have issues like people might have might lie because they don't want to upset you or hurt your feelings etc. But it is still worth doing. It's why at selfmastery.co I have forms weekly and monthly that I give my clients to fill in so I know exactly where they're struggling, how I can help them best and what I need to improve. So having both forms of feedback is crucial. You need the data to see what's working and what's not objectively. And then the you need the personal feedback to see what can be improved on an experienced level. If you're not getting feedback, your systems quite simply is not getting smarter. It's not improving. And that's exactly why your systems don't work.
But once you have that feedback, what do you do with it? Well, here's what you need to understand. A system is really like a pipe. And the goal is a smooth flow of water through the pipe. When things feel stuck in your business, when progress is slow, leads are inconsistent, sales performance is sloppy, or results are unpredictable, it's because a part of that pipe, your system is blocked.
So, if we run with the pipe metaphor here, if you picture your business system as a whole, as a whole, as a pipe carrying water, that pipe is different sections. Each section corresponding to your business system. So, there's a section for marketing, sales, operations, and finance. The water is essentially throughput volume flowing through the system, flowing through your business. At the start of the pipe or system, the water is leads. But as it moves through the pipe, it becomes a client and then comes out at the end of the pipe as profit. But right now, let's say the pipe has five blockages. One in sales, one in onboarding, one in fulfillment, one in client retention, one in cash flow. So the water the water is not flowing smoothly through the pipe.
Now your marketing system is actually the top. Okay, this is what most people don't understand about marketing. It is the top at the start of the pipe of your system because it essentially controls how much water enters the system because for you to get profit, you know the whole goal of running a business, you need clients. For you to get clients, you need sales. For you to get sales, you need leads. For you to get leads, you need marketing. And the more and better your marketing, the more you open the top, the more leads you get that enter the system. So if you have those five blockages, even when you turn up the top marketing and get more people into your ecosystem, into your business sort of pipeline, the more water might enter the system as elites, right? But the water is still being bottlenecked by the five blockages. And so it doesn't change how much water comes out the end, how much profit you make.
What most people do then is try to fix all the blockages at once. But the blockages, they typically impact each other. So fixing one might influence and worsen another. It might not, but it might. Okay? And if you're trying to fix all the blockages at once, your time and effort are so spread fin that nothing actually gets fixed. So the smart move is to actually just fix one blockage, the main blockage, the one constraint limiting the water the most. Now obviously to do this to figure out what that constraint is. You need data, which is why your scorecards are so important. And the video I'll link at the end of this one will explain not only how to build scorecards and how to use them, but also how you identify your constraint and what to focus on fixing to really blow up your business. And yes, look, this feels like you're moving slower, but if you try to fix everything at once, it feels fast until you realize you're never actually solving anything. But by going all in in that one constraint, you actually do make progress. So by going slow, you actually move fast.
Now, once you fixed one blockage, you can then fix the next and then the next. And each fix unlocks more flow, more water coming through the pipe, and more efficiency. If you fix your sales problems, more leads turn into customers. You fix your fulfillment problems and more customers get results, they stay longer, refer others, etc., etc. Eventually, the water runs clean and it runs fast. Because look, scaling is actually simple in theory at least. You just turn up your marketing. So once your marketing system works and gets you leads at a profitable price, you open the tap. You turn on marketing more to drive more leads into the system. But you have to clear the pipe first, then turn up the tap once the system can handle it. Because there's zero point in turning up your marketing if all the water is going to get blocked. If your systems can't handle it, all you're doing is pouring water into a broken pipe. Like if your sales system is the bottleneck, you lose out on people who could have been customers in the future. And if say fulfillment or operations is your bottleneck, you'll potentially ruin your company's reputation with service due to having more clients than you can handle.
Now, obviously, there's a bit of a paradox here whereby to see if your system can handle more volume, you have to drive more volume through it. But don't just keep turning up the marketing when things are broken. Keep it where it's at till it's fixed. And really, that's how you build a system that blows up your business. It's that simple. Okay? You map the systems in your business. You track the data. You fix the bottleneck. You turn up marketing. You fix the next bottleneck. You repeat. By turning up marketing, you allow more water into the pipe. By fixing the bottleneck, you let more water flow through the pipe and for your profit to increase. And then you repeat fixing bottlenecks and increasing and improving marketing. Aim for progress. Okay? Aim for progress for iteration. Build the system, run it, watch it break, fix it, run it again, then turn up the tab. That is a cycle. But of course, you need data for this and that means you need scorecards. So, if you want to know how to build scorecards and identify the constraint holding your business back, click the video on screen now and I'll show you how to do.