Structure and Process vs. Freedom and Flexibility

I think that you have to really truly get bought into the idea that everything you want is on the other side of structure, process, and routine. It's not an exception of. Hey everyone. I don't know how you got into being a business owner, but my guess is you probably got into business for some level of freedom. Freedom, flexibility, and arguably some financial success, and heck, maybe even to have some fun along the way. But let's narrow in and talk about two elements of that that I just mentioned, and that is freedom and flexibility. You get to do what you want to do and when you want to do it. Sometimes those words can get interchangeable, and I think that's totally fine, but I think really it comes down to, you know, what are you, you doing what you want to do when you want to do it with who you want to do it and having the money to be able to do so. But you ever thought about that oftentimes that desire, that burning desire that we had to just not be told what to do by someone else, to be able to carve our own path, oftentimes comes at odds and bumps up against this idea that we need to have structure and process and routine. Into the organization. I think I was on the call and then ultimately on a podcast where I felt like this came up back to back. And these two things at the— on the outside are probably subconscious in nature, but they were certainly this way for me. I felt very at odds that I personally did not want to effectively be told what to do. I like to make things up. And, you know, make it real and then allow other people to make it recur. The problem is, is my desire for freedom and flexibility oftentimes butts up against what the business needs and what the team needs. The team is asking you for consistency, for clarity, for structure, for organization. The business is asking for structure, process, and routine. But that bumps up against everything that we have as small business owners. I think it's particularly relevant in those business owners around half a million in revenue up to about a million. This becomes very, very challenging. You start the business, you're running on adrenaline. You're almost like running from something. You're selling like crazy. You're effectively being the rainmaker. And that's really exactly what you need to do. You got to get air underneath the sails. You know, one thing that does bother me a lot of times is if you hear from a very successful entrepreneur business owner, and I— some people that are my mentors will share this stuff on social media as well, but it's almost like sometimes they've forgotten about what it looks like whenever they don't have money, like significant amount of money. Things like, oh yeah, I would start a business and I'll immediately start that business with 3 or 4 people. Well, you have either the financial resources yourself that you're investing, you're putting your personal money into investing into this new startup, Or you've raised capital. And so it's not all of your money that's at stake into this bootstrapped organization. But if they go back themselves to when they first started their company, oftentimes it was because they too had to work their tail off to get to a certain point. Marques Brownlee has a YouTube talks about this where he was doing all the things. He was the genius with 1,000 octopus arms, and he had to start kind of beginning to cut those arms off. I think a lot of business owners really get stuck— myself was included in this very much— they get stuck in that $300,000 to $1 million range. I think it becomes particularly relevant at $500,000 to $1 million. They've read the books at this point. They've had a, you know, some level of success. They maybe have upgraded the vehicle. They have a family member, maybe a spouse, who no longer is working, or maybe working in the business with them potentially. And so they understand the idea of buying back their time to read, obviously, to pull from one of Dan Martell's books. They've read The E-Myth. So they get that I need to work on it. And we would say work on it and above it. So they get that. They hear things like, they read EOS or specifically read Traction, where it talks about having a visionary and integrator, and they see themselves as the visionary. They know that they need to work on it because they read E-Myth. They knew, they know they need to buy back their time, but they kind of feel like they're in a quandary. Like, where do I actually allocate my time with all of these type of things? I, I, the, the team has grown. Maybe I now have 4 or 5 people, so I've got a lot more direct reports than what I used to have. Um, they, they know they need to kind of begin to build systems, but they're not really sure exactly how to do that. They get that it makes sense to actually have systems and processes documented into the business so they can transfer that knowledge to people, but they don't really know exactly how— what that looks like. And I think at the end of the day that if business owners would more readily recognize the stage that they're at and recognize that it is indeed hard. I mean, listen, it's much easier when Dan Martell is able to hire 6-figure employees to be able to do it. And listen, I respect the heck out of Dan. This is actually really out of kudos to him specifically. And I do believe that you can buy back your time even in that first few hundred thousand dollar range. But oftentimes we subconsciously are butting up this idea of like, wait a minute, freedom and flexibility, freedom and flexibility. That's why I did this. And yet everybody's asking me to delegate and create structure into the organization. And those two things can feel at odds from one another. So what's the solution? That's the problem. That's maybe you, some of you may see yourself in that situation. But what is the actual antidote or the solution to it? I think that you have to really truly get bought into the idea that everything you want is on the other side of structure, process, and routine. The very thing that you fear the most— of being boxed in a corner, feeling like you're— it's too rigid, feeling like you can't be yourself— everything that you actually want is on the other side. Of structure, process, and routine. It's not an exception of. And so we started the business for freedom and flexibility, and it can give you everything that you want. You think about when we did an interview with Dustin Booth, and I interviewed Dustin on the podcast. Dustin's a very disciplined guy himself, but he talked about like, I'm living my dream. He's living his dream because he embedded structure, process, routine, and discipline into the organization. The team needed that. They didn't need chaos. They wanted the business to be calm. Does that mean that we're not going to make iterations and improvements along the way? Of course we are. But the team really wants the business to be calm. They want it to be consistent. And a lot of times, we, the business owner, are the opposite of that. We are not consistent. We are not overly structured. We have to develop the skill of discipline, and we can do that. Just takes us some time to be able to do it. But if we can get to this idea, we can really buy into philosophically. And as much as I love to, on this podcast, try to give you all tools, practical frameworks, concepts that you can go and take away, maybe even, you know, templates that you guys can use from us or an asset that we can pass along to you. Sometimes there just has to be a shift in mindset. There just has to be this awareness. And we finally buy into this idea that I do need the business to run on an operating system, as an example. And I am, even though it's hard and I don't know how to do it, if I lean into it enough, I will start to begin to build some of these playbooks. I will be able to start to hand this off to my, to my team. And so when we think about structure, process, and routine, what I'm talking about specifically is having the business to run on something outside of you. It's, it's running on an operating system. It's not a you OS anymore. It's an actual business OS. It's a BOS, a a, a business operating system. It's something that exists outside of whatever your, you know, you, you and your name. And that's what the business is begging for. It's begging for that level of structure, that level of process embedded into it, that business, that level of routine. And also your team is as well. And so while it can feel on the outside that freedom and flexibility can butt up against this idea of structured process and an operating system, in fact It's not everything that you want. And the reason you got into business is for some level of freedom, flexibility, fun, and financial success. You can have all of that as long as it's on the other side of structure, process, routine, and specifically what we think of as a business operating system. By the way, I'd love to give you a couple of free tools that can help you with this. If you go to our Above the Business Toolkit, go to blueprintos.com. /Assets, you can get access to our Above the Business toolkit. And we got a few other things that help you kind of get your hands around the structure of the business operating system. What is a, what's a principle? What's a playbook? What is a system? What's the difference in a system and a process? Our tool can help you with that. We call it the OS architecture. Love to give that to you. BlueprintOS.com/Assets. All right, everyone. Hope this served you well. Till next time, lead well, I think it'll be great.