For a long time, I have been trying to convince people that the key to a successful business is in the systems that we create and maintain. The more automated systems you have, the more your business can operate without you needing to attend to it every second of the day – and once you have enough automation in place, the freedom lifestyle awaits. So this week’s Hardcore MBA guest, Sam Carpenter, is really speaking my language. His book, Work the System, explains how you can tweak the set of systems and processes that make up your business to increase your efficiency tenfold.
In this week’s podcast, Sam and I discuss:
- How to evaluate the problems in your business, break them down into separate processes, and then design improvements to those processes.
- Identifying the 1% of your business or life that is causing the problems while the other 99% runs smoothly – the ultimate application of the Pareto Principle.
- And how to apply Sam’s principles to training new staff, reducing the amount of time it takes from months to days.
“Most people see their lives as a swirling, chaotic mass of things,” Sam tells me, “and their businesses are the same. The owner tends to become very good at dealing with a whole load of problems at once, but the company never really grows; or it does grow and everything just seems to get more and more chaotic and unmanageable. But if we can see that our lives are collections of separate systems, then we can identify the systems that aren’t working well enough, and fix them. And when that happens, we see that life is not a dysfunctional mess – it just needs a little bit of tweaking.”
Sam is a great guy, and the ideas in this week’s podcast could really transform your company from a source of stress into a source of freedom, so I strongly recommend giving it a listen. When you’re done, check out the Work The System website, where you can sign up for Sam’s newsletter and download the book for free. Until next time, keep tweaking those systems!
