Episode 451: Throwback - SYSTEMology with David Jenyns

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, it's actually a throwback episode that I did with David Jennings, who wrote the book Systemology. Now we're in a series right now that I'm dropping on Fridays talking about the operating system. Now, David and I have a little bit different methodology and even thought process, and he used even a little bit of different language, but I wanted to come in and drop this episode, kind of bring this back. We had a number of new listeners to the podcast, and I felt feel like that if you've not gone back and listened to this episode, I mean, at this point we've dropped 450+ or so episodes, that this would be important to bring back, especially in light of us, what we've been talking about on Fridays. We've talked about the importance of a team headquarters. We've talked about having a handful of playbooks in the business, so on and so forth. But it all centralizes around this idea of systemizing the business. And ultimately, I think the business needs to kind of upgrade its operating system from being reliant upon you, like a you operating system, to actually running on something outside of you. We call that a blueprint operating system. So I felt like even though David and I use a little bit different language and even maybe the way that we structure things is slightly different, his book is fantastic. And I would encourage you to go take a peek at that after you listen to this podcast. So here's a throwback episode with myself and David Jennings.

David, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Pleasure to be here.

Great to have you. Well, for people that don't know, it is morning time for you, for where you are, obviously getting into late afternoon where I am. So David, maybe you can share with people where you're coming from, but more importantly, we love to start with background and origin story. I know just a little bit about your background, but why don't you take our listeners that may not be familiar with your work, back and then bring us to present day.

Yeah, perfect. So I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. So yes, we are just at 8 AM on my side of the world. And if I go all the way back, I've had entrepreneurial DNA from day dot that came from my dad and he always used to have these little side businesses that he was starting and there'd always been this thread of systems and processes through that because he was a systems engineer, and that's just how he saw the world. And for me, I've over the years been involved in everything from a rock and roll clothing music store that we franchised. We were actually modeling off Hot Topic for those in the States that know that company. We're bringing that to Australia. I've also had a video production business, different importing businesses, online businesses. I was probably most well known for my last business, which was a digital agency. I've also been in the stock market education space. So I've tried a lot of different things over the years and there's always been this thread of systems and processes there. But it was funny, that last business for me, the digital agency, is the one I got stuck in. Even though I had all of that experience with the systems, I thought, but this business is different because Google's always changing its algorithms. How can I write systems and processes for this business? Because it's a creative agency. You can't systemize creativity. And I had all of this baggage around why I couldn't step out of the day-to-day operations and why I was so tied to the business. And it wasn't until I had a breakthrough moment when we found out we were pregnant and I thought, I don't want to be that dad who's always too busy because I was working the 60, 70-hour work weeks. And then that was the catalyst for me to relook at things. I intuitively knew systems was the way out and I systematically removed myself from that business, popped in a CEO, and then took about a year off. And in that year off, that's when I thought, well, what do I wanna do? And realized I fell out of love with the digital agency work and thought, I wanna help business owners get out of the day-to-day operations, systemize their business. And that really was the birth of Systemology. And a lot of the work that I do these days.

That's awesome. Well, so that leads me to my very first kind of big question. In my own journey, I've shared this obviously in the podcast in different ways with our listening audience. I started, and I wouldn't have had the language when I started it this way, but I started my business 14, 13, 14 years ago, my first, first one, because I desired freedom. I desired freedom. I desired flexibility. And so this idea of structure and process and systemizing felt like I was getting backed into a corner, right? Like it was going to pin me in. Yet for me, I didn't realize that everything I actually wanted was on the other side of that. And so my question is, for somebody else who is that entrepreneur that likes to be able to go and come as they please, they love the flexibility in their schedule, etc. Maybe we can talk around just the first, the mindset and the philosophical belief that's necessary around getting around to the idea of like, oh, I really do need to systemize my business.

Yeah, I often find it will vary based on the person who's listening to this and where they're at and what they want to accomplish. Some people might be looking to exit their business and they'll put systems in for one reason. Someone might be looking to scale a business and they'll need systems. Someone might just want to create a lifestyle business that runs automatically and has a lot of the day-to-day operations covered through process. There's a lot of different reasons, but I know there's a lot of baggage that business owners have, especially visionary founders who start a business from scratch. And because they've built that business up from scratch, oftentimes they're the technician. They're very familiar with working in the business because that's all they know. And the picture in their head of what success looks like for them in their business has them in the picture because that's what they've built from day dot. So it's actually very hard for some business owners to start to change that picture and see the business working without them. So that, that's a big thing as to what traps them. But the reality is, and I had a big breakthrough with my video production business where it was the first business that I wasn't the technician and I got to observe it from afar. And the videographer I had at the time brought me along on a shoot one day And I remember in the car ride to the shoot, we spent 45 minutes discussing if he had a spare battery and if he had emailed the client to let them know not to wear checkered shirts because that looks bad on camera, or did we get the extra extension cable. And we spent that whole car ride having those discussions. And then after the shoot, I said to him, look, we're gonna put a checklist in place so that before you go on a shoot, you organize all this stuff beforehand, the night before, and then you go on the shoot. So we put that in place. About 6 months later, I go on another shoot with him, and the car ride was vastly different because all of the things that just needed to be handled were handled by the process. In the car ride, we started talking about how we wanted to frame the shot and what performance he wanted to get from the different actors and the lenses he was going to use. Getting the systems and the processes in place actually creates space for the creativity because there's certain things in business that just need to happen. So the counterintuitive thought here is that systems remove creativity and lock you in to a certain way, but it's the counterintuitive thought. And once it's rolled out that you actually realize that the systems is what frees the business owner because then what needs to happen happens, and then the business owner can start to work more intuitively, work on the high-value tasks that only they can work on. And it's, it's that key insight that once you get it and you see it, that, that becomes a little bit of a mind virus and, and changes things for the business owner.

Boy, two things you just mentioned there, they're super valuable. Number one for me, the creating the, the space for the creativity. It doesn't stifle it. That's number one. Number two, kind of working backwards, everybody may have a different reason, a catalyst. Yours happened to be obviously, uh, the birth of a child coming up. That, or whether it's you're wanting to build towards exit, you're wanting to build towards scale, you're wanting to build a certain lifestyle that allows you to kind of come and go. The reason may be a little different as to what your, your story was. For me, I was tired of working all the time. I mean, I was just like really frustrated with the business. And I kept hearing people talk about systems and processes. As a matter of fact, it actually made me really irritated because every time I would go to maybe to walk conference, you would hear something to the effect, or I would, you know, systems and processes, got to have systems and processes. And, you know, oh, by the way, have a good team. I'd hear that. And I was like, oh, okay, no crap. You know, I've heard that, you know, too many times. But I actually, until I was in Toronto, sitting next to a guy who was running a $40 million company. He had made $5 million the year before until he flipped his computer around and showed me one of their documented processes. And I remember how beautiful the document was, how easy it was to read. And he kind of flipped through a few. He said, this is what it looks like, this is what it takes. That was a moment that really changed for me because I had actually saw what it actually looked like. Because before then Everybody has talked about documentation, but I never— nobody ever showed me anything. I was like, what is this? Is there a fantasy, like, curtain behind the scenes that somebody's just not going to show me what the systems and processes are? Can you maybe speak to just that aspect of maybe people just needing to see what it actually looks like?

One thing you said there which really sparked a thought for me Effective business systems development is the master skill. So for the business owner, it really is the skill that underpins everything because your business is a collection of systems. Every problem that you have in your business is a problem with your systems. If you don't have enough leads, you need better lead generation systems. If you are having trouble with conversions and selling, you need a better sales system. If you're having cash flow issues, You need better finance management systems. If you're having problem with staff, you need better recruitment and onboarding systems. Every problem in business is a systems problem. So if the business owner, their job really is to solve these problems, they make it up and then they put it into place and make it real. And the key here, the missing bit is then to make it recur. And that's where a lot of business owners struggle with the recurring because they're usually the one that makes it recur. That's where you get trapped. So once you figure out how to go from idea and solving a problem to a documented system or process that solves that problem perpetually, and then over time, these collection of documented systems, they become your business. The staff will come and go. The systems will always remain. You build a culture of improving these systems. And regardless of what business you're ever involved in, those systems can keep coming with you. All businesses need to generate leads. All businesses need to convert those leads. Like the, the core components are the same. So going to work on your systems is one of the most valuable things that a business owner can do with their time. And oftentimes the picture that people have in their head of what a system is isn't always where they should start. Because when you talk to a business owner and say, what is a system? What does it look like? Oftentimes they're thinking, well, McDonald's is a systemized business and they've documented every aspect of their business to minute detail so that a 16-year-old can do it and they've got these big thick binders and that's what a system looks like. Oh, wow. Now I'm overwhelmed because of the sheer amount of work that needs to happen. And the— I don't even like documentation and I have to create all this stuff. So you're right. One of the first things we need to do is reshape in their head what a system is. A system could be as simple as a recording, a screen recording of someone doing the task. Maybe it's your bookkeeper issuing out an invoice through MYOB, and it's a 20-minute video of them doing that task. That can be a system. That's version number one. That's the other thing. Systems are iterative. They are live documents that continue to grow and evolve. So you just start with the simplest first. It could be a simple checklist The real key is just to have a central location where all this knowledge is getting stored and then building up the habits within the team to continually work those systems. But you really need to simplify your vision of what a system is and go, what is the simplest version here? How can I make it easy to capture and not overcook this? And how can I start off applying the 80/20 rule and only capture the essential systems rather than every system because you can't document everything out of the gate. So you just want to lower that bar and make it simple enough to get started.

Boy, I wish that— this is what I wish I'd have heard 10 years ago, right? This is— so I know that how applicable this is because I'm just going back as you were talking, all of those things, I had the thoughts myself. Man, where do I begin? Yeah, I get it. But like, where do I start? I'm— for those of you listening to this, you're not going to be able to see, but on my screen, I'm pulling up a blank. It's just a blank Google document, right? And this is what I would stare at, David. I would just— it was just that cursor blinking.

Yes.

And, you know, maybe I named it. I don't know. I just happened to do another podcast on recruiting. Recruiting system. And then it would just sit there on that document and I'd be like, oh man. So I'd get started and it was a mess. It wasn't organized. It wasn't beautiful. And I'd give up on it. I just give up. I was like, I don't have time for this. I got, I got David, I got emails, I got customers, I got phone calls. I got all these kinds of things. And I really just did not make the time for this and until Finally, for me, I said, okay, enough is enough. I'm either going to do this or I'm leaving entrepreneurship. Like I'm leaving being a small business owner. I can just go back into the corporate world. I was in, had previously been in pharmaceuticals. I can go back into pharmaceuticals and can just give up on it. Or I can finally, for the first time, lean into this thing everybody keeps talking about, which is systems and processes. So that leads me to my next question, which is. When you are looking at, and you kind of gave an example of that a minute ago, but I'm, I'm curious for somebody that maybe has seen that blinking cursor, what, what do you tell them as far as like getting started and, and, and, and having just beginning the, the momentum of the starting the documentation?

Depending on where you're at, as in the size of team that you have and the business, sometimes the direction I give can be a little bit different. If you're a solo person or you've just got one or two staff, generally just getting comfortable doing Loom recordings of everything that you do and storing it in a Google Drive or an Office 365 folder or whatever it ends up being. That can be sufficient. Just start off going, what are you doing? Record yourself. Next time you issue out that invoice or pay wages or whatever it might be, record yourself doing it. Create 2 or 3 of those, stick it in a folder, create some folders that can slightly organize things by department. You know, maybe you've got sales and finance and just start getting into that habit because the whole key is we're just looking at making some of those tasks that you're doing recurring. So that's if you're a solo person and when you've got a collection of those, then you might look at getting some sort of virtual assistant to help you to take those videos and start to pull out the checklists and get started. But there's not a huge amount of leverage that comes from a system or a process when it's just you. Mm-hmm. That doesn't mean you shouldn't start capturing it, but that means there's no point in over-engineering the documentation and spending all your time documenting when you're going to be the only one looking at it. Now, that changes once you get typically around 7 or more staff. Once you start to get up that end and you've got a bit of traction, or maybe even a bit smaller like 5, that's when I really like to think whom on the team can we identify as our systems champion. Of all the businesses that I've worked with, the ones that are the most successful, that get the best results in the shortest time, that change their culture and have this stick, they all have a systems champion. Now, the systems champion is effectively, if you imagine your systems and processes department The systems champion is like the department head. It's the person who keeps it front and center. It's the person who celebrates system wins and lets the team know that, hey, Jenny just created a new document and it's great and we should all look at it. It's the person who supports team members to create documentation where they might meet with a team member the team member records themself doing the task, and then the systems champion goes away, gets the video transcribed, feeds it into ChatGPT and asks it to create a draft of the process, tidies it up, and then sends it back to that knowledgeable worker and says, hey, how does this look? It's that team member is the linchpin for me, and it's where I'm doing most of my work currently. When I wrote the book Systemology, that really was for the business owner to make the case for business documentation for small business. The Systems Champion book, which is the next book that I'm working on at the moment, is the book for the person who's actually gonna really do it and drive it because the business owner quite often is not the best person to be writing systems and processes. We want to figure out how do we streamline the extraction of the IP out of their brain, but not get them caught up in low-value documentation tasks. So it's— that systems champion works alongside the business owner and the key team members from the leadership team to figure out how do we capture, organize, and optimize this best practice knowledge and have it front and center so that when someone is assigned a task, it is clear what our expectations are around how it's done.

I think that's amazing. I got a question on that. Would that look like initially it really is the owner's job to architect— that's language that I use quite often— is to architect that to be in place from the jump and that this is what we're going to do. This is why we're going to do it. They start setting out, you know, the vision of what that's going to be. And then they begin to tee that over and transfer that ownership over to somebody else. And so is it fair to say maybe somebody has a team of 5, as an example, you just gave that one. And so they got a team of 5, they got 3 sales and a couple of service people, et cetera. Maybe one of them is their, is their EA, but they say, you know, we've got to begin to kind of document this. This is being run way too much through my personality and not enough through systems. And so they have to champion that themselves initially to get it off the ground and to keep it going. But ultimately, they're gonna transfer that over to someone else. Is it, is that fair to say about how the initial?

Yeah, I think you hit on a real key point that maybe I overlooked in the original Systemology book because I had the good fortune to do some work with Michael Gerber. I talk about it in the book and I sent him an early copy of the book. And he, his only piece of feedback on the book was he said, Dave, just remember, don't let the business owner off the hook. Just because you've written it in the book that you get a systems champion and they're gonna drive everything and they're gonna make it easy and yes, they're gonna do a lot of the documentation, but you can't let the business owner off the hook because they need to lead this. They need to show their support for this. They need to, not be above the law. They need to follow the process when they're working in the business. They also have to follow the rulebook. So there's a lot of how do we get the business owner to introduce it and how do they pass the responsibility and demonstrate to the team that this is important and valuable and I'm putting resources behind it and this is the way that we do things here. There's a big part of the business owner needing to do that. In the early days, I often talk about first capture what you're currently doing, not what you would like to be doing. And that's often more of a function of small business has very limited time and resources and the business owner and the key team members are extremely busy and they don't have time necessarily or the space to reimagine systems and processes, but tremendous wins can be gained just by identifying what's currently done and who already does the task very well and then making it repeatable. That's really the key. You want to capture best practice, then delegate it down to less skilled, lower cost team members to free up the higher skilled team members to work on the higher value tasks. So that's where I talk about we don't optimize or re-engineer process right at the start because a lot of small business owners, they just don't have the space, but huge wins can be gained just by making what is working repeatable and taking it off the plate of key team members.

I think that, I think that's really key. I hope we, I just want to double tap on that. Is that you can probably look at how you onboard a new customer as an example and say, well, you know, there's all these things I wish we would do. I wish we would send them a handwritten note. I wish that we would put together a gift bag or a box or something like that, depending on what type of business it's in, etc. I want to do all those things. But to your point, let's just do what— let's just document what we're doing currently. And then we can improve upon and add some of those things over time versus you can get yourself caught up into an aspirational system versus what it is currently. And also, I just want to, I think it's important too, is that somebody could hear the systems champion. I think I, well, I would have heard it this way. Oh, that's a really good idea. I'll let myself off the hook. I don't want to do this. I'm not really good at documenting things. Let me just hand this over to somebody and abdicate the responsibility. You know what, XYZ person on my team, I want us to document all of our systems and processes. Go make that happen. And I'm just advocating it, right? Because I'm above the law. I don't have to do it. I can just throw it over to somebody else and they're going to go systemize everything perfectly. I mean, maybe that's happening, you know, with the proper right person, but that's probably not the case. It really has to be the founder. The owner really has to be driving to say, to your point, I'm putting resources behind this. I'm gonna put time and put people, I'm even gonna put financial commitment behind it. If we need to use new tech, we're gonna, you know, Loom or whatever that's gonna use. Like, we're, we're, we're going to do this. I think that's a really important point that you make there.

Yeah, I think there is a cost required to make this happen. Systemizing your business and helping it to grow and scale and putting that foundations won't happen automatically. And a lot of business owners, especially when you're starting out, you are very much replacing time for dollars. You're doing the work. So when you're in the business, you are getting dollars for the time that you're doing, like you're trading that time for dollars. Whereas when you start developing systems and processes, you're, you're working on an asset, something that once the system is created, it will continue to create your, you dollars regardless of whether or not you're there because it's being executed by someone. So in the early days, you do trade time for dollars, but at some point you need to transition even part of your time to building up the asset because the long-term goal here is to have the business as an asset that works without you, that generates you a nice residual income. If you're— and then the real goal is to have the business owner to have the freedom to work on it, in it, or whatever they want to do. I think where a lot of business owners get stuck is they start business thinking, I want all of this freedom, and then they get a couple of years into it and then they realize they've got anything but freedom because they're chained to the business and there's nothing they can do about it. But if you've got the freedom, like, even though our business runs incredibly smoothly, I still get involved in the bits that I love getting involved in. I'm not sitting down at the beach sipping Mai Tais. I'm like, this is what I love doing, and I get juiced about it. So it's understanding yourself and what it is that you enjoy, understanding that your building an asset here. And where is the asset? The asset is the systems. It's the machine. The job of the business owner is to build a profitable enterprise that works without them. That's the asset. And when you're working in it, you should be getting a wage for whatever role you're fulfilling. If you're the CEO, you get the CEO's wage. If you're working in sales, well, you should— a portion of what you get comes from whatever roles you're fulfilling because You need to replace yourself in those roles at some point in time to grow and scale. And then whatever wage you were drawing for that role then gets paid on to someone else. The ultimate goal is to get the machine to the point where it produces a profit, even when we're paying everybody appropriate salaries, and then you as the owner of that get a dividend. That's how you should be paid for that piece. So, I mean, there's a little bit of a change in thought as your business starts to grow and how you get paid, a portion of what you get paid portion should be wages while you're sort of in it, and a portion really should be dividends, which is profit. You're actually getting both because you're having both roles, but over time you reduce your wage and you're hoping to increase that dividend.

Well, that's so good. Yeah, I love that, and I completely agree with you as well. And those— there's a word that you use there that I did not have in my vernacular until maybe 5, 6 years ago, and it's asset. I never saw— and kind of one of our maxims that we picked up is income follows assets. I never thought of the documentation of how we do anything in the business as an asset. And I've asked some of our clients before, you know, somebody documents a certain thing that they do. And I've asked people, how many of you would like to have that documentation? And everybody's like, yes, send it to me, right? I'm like, it's an asset. See, it's an asset. You start to adopt that and you start to see things like, oh, wow, I never actually thought that that Google document or that Word document, I never thought that Excel spreadsheet, I never thought, saw that as an asset. Well, I didn't either, because I just didn't have that language. Now you start to see something. And even that, it's funny, ironically, I just sent this to, to, to one of my boardroom, uh, groups, is I said, um, the question I'll ask me if there's a, uh, if I feel stuck or challenged or something has not gone the way that I wanted to, I'll actually ask my question myself, the question, uh, where do we have an asset deficiency? In the business. And that has been a good forcing function for me.

The other thing with systems and really any asset, the first asset that you put in, the first dollar, the first system that you put in place, it's so small at the start that you don't really notice the positive return or the impact. That's actually why a lot of business owners delay in creating the asset because you don't get the instant gratification. The first system that you put in place that saves you 3 minutes each week, well, you don't really notice that it's an asset and it's the 8th wonder of the world as Einstein talks about it, is it's when you get compound growth. It's when the assets start layering on top of each other. It's when you have a collection of systems all saving you 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. Before you know it, that accumulation of all of that, there is a tipping point when you just go, wow, I now see the ROI on that asset. But because there's quite a bit of lag time as you build assets before that kicks in, most business owners or a lot of small business owners give up too early. Oh yes, I tried that and it didn't quite work for us. My team didn't follow the process. It really wasn't that much beneficial. The system kept on changing, but they're in that start period before it actually starts to pay off and they abandon it too early. So seeing it as an asset and building it that way, I think is a great mindset.

So I got 2 questions for you before we wrap up, and I could, you know, I could talk to you about this for 3 hours. We'd have a Jocko Willink or a Joe Rogan podcast length. Um, but I get, um, I'm asked quite a bit, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. So somebody has passed the idea, the philosophy, they're bought in, they started to document and they start building assets. They're at that point to where they've I, I don't even want to pull out a number, but they've started to really document things. One of the common questions is, is how far do I go? And I know you mentioned about like we need to lower the bar initially to begin to get things going. We need to document how it is today, not how it is in the future. But you have some people that are really driven. They want to do a good job, right? They want to know like, David, how far have you gone in your documentation? And so can you talk specifically maybe to that person? They're not a, they're not a, they're not a a superstar when it comes to this, but they're certainly not a novice. They're way past that. They've been doing this for a couple of years. How far do they go in documentation?

The first big turning point where I see the most significant permanent change and the culture of the organization never goes back is reaching a level of what I call minimum viable systems. And it's the idea where systems touch all aspects of the business. So if you think of your business as a collection of systems and you think of your business in terms of its different departments, sales, HR, finance, management, and then you apply the 80/20 rule to each one of those departments and you say, what is the purpose of this department. What would cause me to say that this department failed or succeeded? As in, well, if it's HR, it's probably recruiting, onboarding, and managing. For sales, it's conversion of leads. For— so you figure out what the core function of that department is and then go, If I had to only pick the essential systems for that department, like 80/20, just because you don't document something doesn't mean it's gonna magically stop happening. We just need to first get those essential ones down. And you wanna go through systematically each department and think what happens, you know, what is an essential task here that happens on a triggered basis? What's something that happens on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis? And using that framework, you work through each department, working with department heads if you've got them, to identify what are those mission-critical systems, the ones where if the department failed to deliver this outcome, that department would be a failure in my eyes. And you go to work on those first. If you do that in each department and you bring the entire organization up to that level, then that's the turning point where you notice there's no going back and the culture starts to change. And then where do you move to beyond that? Well, it's a bit of a how far do you want to take this? McDonald's has been doing this for 60 years now, and they have documented every aspect of their business down to the point of taking out the trash. Now, do you want to go that way? Maybe, maybe not. Oftentimes I'll ask people, do you have a hamburger business? Are you looking to build a McDonald's? And they'll say, no, I'm not. I don't have a hamburger business. Well, we don't necessarily need to do things just like McDonald's then. Because sometimes I remember an interview I heard with Reed Hastings from Netflix and he said, oh, we, we decided that we wanted to dummy-proof our systems and we were gonna put systems for every single aspect of the business and we documented it down to super granular detail. So we dummy-proofed our business. The only problem was only dummies wanted to work here and he kind of went, too far and you can take this too far and you can over-document it and you can introduce too much bureaucracy. If what we're looking to really do, I love hiring great A-players who know how to do their jobs. The systems and the processes are just frameworks and guardrails and rules for them to operate in. I still want to create the space for them to create and bring that creative juice that they've got. So again, you have to think a little bit about your business. You have to think about where it is. You have to think about what type of culture you're looking to build and the type of business that you're looking to build as well. So there's, you know, a few aspects there, but I mean, once you're on that train of thought and Michael Gerber always talks about McDonald's being the most successful small business ever because it started off as a small business, one hamburger shop, and then continued that thinking out 60 years of systemization and now see where it's at. But, but the business owner doesn't need to decide that right now. I think let's get some momentum, let's get some reps, let's build up that muscle, let's reach minimum viable systems.

Oh, that's so good. I, cause I agree, like there was a time that I, the pendulum swung too far from I didn't have anything to then it went all the way to the other side to where I was trying to McDonaldize the business because that sounded good. Like that's the thing that was the aspirational thing I needed to do. And I think it's Keith Cunningham that says, you know, that's a good way to strip your organization of creativity and imagination, et cetera. Is to think that you're going to go all the way down to— I mean, I think you used the example of taking the trash out at McDonald's. I think they literally have one for how to use sneeze, like a sneezing system or sneezing process. I'm serious. So like, no, we're not going to go that far. I'm not trying to build the next McDonald's, right? That's not what I'm trying to do. I think it's awesome. David, I have loved connecting with you. This has been great. I was really excited whenever I was able to get you on because this is certainly a a, a passion of mine. People want to connect with you. How, how would you tell them about your book? And tell us about when, uh, you're— if you have an idea, when do you think your next book is going to come out? So where would people connect with you personally and, and learn more about your work and how you can help?

Yeah, perfect. Easiest place to start is over at Amazon. So just search for Systemology. That's where the book is, and the book is useful and complete and explains my thinking and methodology. It's for the business owner in particular. If you want to find out a little bit more, you can go to systemology.com. There's just links to our YouTube channel and podcast and other resources that can help. As far as the Systems Champion book, I actually find writing books slow and painful. It's, it's, uh, I feel great once they're done, and it's a great way to get my thinking out and crystallize it, but I'm probably still 12 months off having that next book, but the Systems Champion book, the idea is to write that for the person who's going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. So I'll, I'll keep you in the loop as that develops.

All right. Well, when it does, we're going to get you back on and love to be able to chat about the specifics in that business. David, it's been great connecting with you.

Thank you for having me.

Oh man, where do I start? That's That episode is right up my alley. I always try to give one nugget or maybe up to 3 different things, but I ended up actually having probably 3 pages of notes. And look, I personally got a lot out of that episode because it really speaks to a lot of the things in my own journey. And some of the questions I ask, I tried to share from my perspective, and you kind of heard a little bit of things that I've had along, uh, my journey and shared on this podcast as well. And many of my clients that I work with would certainly resonate with some of the things that I've shared on there. But I don't share that to at all, you know, make it about my journey or my story. But I do know, because many of you have shared, is that your story is not much different than mine. Of course, we've had different backgrounds, we've had different businesses that we've been a part of, et cetera. But there's still elements of my own journey that I have found that have resonated with many of you. And so I encourage you, go to systemology.com, pick up the book. David and I have talked offline. We've got some other opportunities that I think we're going to be able to possibly partner together on some different things that he's going to be a part of later this year. Because I really think that, and I mentioned this at the beginning, that a lot of the things that he talks about kind of fits hand in glove with the things that I discuss and the things that I talk about more around the operating system. He talks around the systems and the process documentation aspect of it. And so I, I really think that you'll get a ton out of that, out of that book. Go and pick up Systemology, the book, and then stay tuned. You never know, there may be some things later on this year that have some opportunities to hear from David more, not just on this podcast, but in some other different things that we may have cooking up. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting. Coach P Consulting, Today App Pro, and of course Club Capital. Look, you want to get better at managing the financials, getting really close to corporate tax deadlines when this is being released, personal tax deadlines beginning of 2024 coming up. You don't know how to manage the financials, don't really know what your tax bill is going to look like or if you're going to get a refund, go to Club Capital, book a no-obligation demo with someone there, and they can help you kind of get on top of that and even start creating a process and some systems around your financials as well. Club Dot Capital. I love partnering with some of the best of the best. You work with David and Coach P Consulting, work with Alex and his team at Autopilot Recruiting. They have done a beautiful job, both of those organizations, as well as Today App. And what the Today App team has done and what David has done with Coach P and what Alex has done with Autopilot, they are some of the best in the business at what they do. And we specifically have seeked out those people to help become partners with us because we know that they do an incredible job. They serve our audience in amazing ways. Many of you are members of their programs and work with them in different ways, use the software, and there's a reason why. We could partner with different people, we could have a sales team for our partners. We don't want to do that. We want to work with some of the best. And so if you're looking to upgrade your system away from an Excel spreadsheet or other complicated software, you want one that's going to be easy, it's going to be corporate approved, easy to use, and beautiful for you and your team, Go to TodayApp Pro. And if you're looking to be able to bring on some A-players, but you don't love that first part of it, the recruiting, the posting of the jobs, initial interviews, the screening of the resumes, all that stuff, but you want to bring in more A-players and you know you need to recruit on a, on a regular basis. That's hard to put that system in place to do it. Bring on someone like Autopilot Recruiting and then also developing yourself and your A-players. Coach P can absolutely help you to do that. Go to Coach P. Consulting.com. All right, everyone, love this episode. Hope you did as well. Appreciate all of you listening. This was at all helpful to you, go give us a rating on Spotify or Apple. That would be awesome. That actually helps the algorithm to show up for more people. Of course, if you even want to go a step further, sharing this episode with one other person could really help and help us pick up a new listener so we can help them to be able to grow in their leadership and grow their small business. As well. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

Okay, here's the intro and the outro. Well, I hope you enjoyed that throwback episode with myself and David. I want to give a shout out to our podcast sponsors, Coach P Consulting. If you want to help develop your A-players on your team and put them in the environment and yourself in an environment to help you to be able to grow as an insurance agency owner, David can do just that. And he's got the proof in accolades and obviously all the production that he's been able to do as well. Go to Coach P Consulting. Com. You know, one of the things state— excuse me, one of the things Club Capital can help you to do is systemize your cash, systemize your financial statements, the rhythm of helping you to be able to get your numbers on a regular basis so you can make really great decisions in your business. Go to club.capital and book a no-obligation demo and see how they can help you take your back office and make it one of the things that helps fuel your growth for the future. We all know you can't do it without a team. I believe business is a team sport. I've seen some stuff on Twitter or X where, you know, somebody is talking about solopreneur and I thought, that sounds terrible to me. If you're going to have a team, you got to go recruit people. And oftentimes we know as business owners, we're wearing so many different hats, but we've got to be able to take some of those hats off and we can hand them over to someone else who can wear them even better than us. Is exactly what Autopilot— that's exactly what Autopilot Recruiting can help you to do. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com. If you're looking to get away from all the Excel spreadsheets in your business, have one centralized place for some of the word tracks that you have, your bonus and your compensation plans, TodayApp Pro can do that for you. Go to todayapppro.com. TodayApp pro.com. All right, and finally, if you like some of the things that I share on here, go to blueprintos.com, register for my upcoming live web class, Operator to Owner, so you can build a business and actually get the blueprint for building a business— designing, then building a business. Let me redo that. If you like some of the things that I talk about on here, go to blueprintos.com, register for my upcoming web class, Operator to Owner, so we can help you to give you the blueprint for designing, building, and installing a business that runs and grows without you. Blueprintos.com. All right, everyone, hope you enjoyed that throwback episode. Lead well and go be great.