Ep 138 | Time to Clean Up Our Systems

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to discuss cleaning up your systems. It's time to clean up your systems. Now what the heck does that mean? See, most of us, whether we know it or not, We have models and systems for virtually all that we do. Some of these systems are great. They're robust. They're documented. Even we're very clear on what's driving, you know, the activities and the results. Some of our systems are organic. We don't even realize we have them, but there's likely a cadence or specific steps that you take in different aspects or elements, components of your life. When we talk business, we know our sales systems, we know our operation systems, maybe our marketing system. When we talk health, you're running some sort of model or system around your health. When you go to bed and when you wake up, what you eat, how you work out. When you think about relationships, there are specific things that you do to, to create good relationships, right? Like you're purposeful in your communication, you're frequent with it, you're consistent with it. There's quality. You know, you display certain behaviors or you earn trust. There's a system to it. We can go through all areas of your life. Bottom line is you have models and systems, whether you know it or not. What I want to encourage everybody to do today though, is look at their various systems and, and consider that it may be time to clean them up and make them a bit more efficient. See, here's what I know. And I, here's what I personally experienced. When I do not focus on the systems and I just continue to run the same plays, there's a tendency to become a little less efficient. There's a tendency to make things a little bit more complicated or convoluted than necessary. There's a tendency to have success with the system in spite even of the system itself, right? Like there's just over time when you don't evaluate or reevaluate, things can go a little sideways. That's natural. And so when I say clean up your systems, here's what I want to encourage you to do. I want you to use the 80/20 principle, Pareto's principle. And I want you to ask yourself, of all of the activities, of all of the tactics within this system, which of these tactics are actually generating the greatest result, having the greatest influence on the result? What's the 20% of these tactics that's responsible for 80% of the result. Equally as important, what is the 80% of these tactics that's generating a very, very small portion of the result, 20% of the result? See, we have a tendency to treat a lot of these tactics, a lot of these, these, these components of the process equally, but the reality is these components don't perform equally. They don't impact things equally. And so when I think around cleaning up, I think about evaluating a system, getting rid of what's not really impacting things and doubling or tripling down on what really is. So let's use health as an example. Y'all know, I, I love using health as an example for things because it's, we can all relate to it. It's all pretty clear. You know, it's, it may, it may be hard to do, but we're all clear on what the plan would entail. If I said, what's your health system? Again, it probably has something to do with your sleep. Your food, your workout, and, and some other elements, your mental health, whatever it may be. And if I said, okay, of all of the things that you're doing in your health, what do you think is having the greatest impact on the way you feel, the way you look, the energy you have right now? Now we're all going to have a little bit different answer. My answer at this very moment is the workout, the type of workouts that I'm doing. Don't get me wrong, food, sleep, all these things matter, but the thing at this very moment that's generating the greatest result is the type of training I'm doing. Now, mind you, I'm training specifically for, uh, an endurance event. So the workout itself is having the greatest impact on how I think I'll perform in that endurance event. Again, that's not to say food and other things are not important. But my training is what's driving most of the result. Of all of the things that I'm doing for my health, that may be having the least impact on my result, I believe, is my supplements. The different things that I'm doing or toying with to impact my performance. You know, I have general vitamins and things of that nature that I take, and then there's always things I'm experimenting. So where am I going with this? In terms of my health system right now, The thing that's generating the greatest result is my training. The thing that is just a bunch of noise that I probably at this very moment should focus a little less attention and energy around is my supplementation. So I know that's kind of a funny example, but let's apply it to sales, right? Uh, many of us are in real estate. Uh, if you're not in real estate, I think you'll understand. That in real estate we run open houses, you know, where a realtor sits at a home and invites the neighborhood in to tour it and hopefully create some new relationships and a potential buyer. But if you look at your— if you're a real estate professional and you look at your open house system, from the phone calls and the door knocks and the invitations you make to that open house, all the way through the event itself to the follow-up required after the open house, my guess is that 20% of those activities that you're doing is generating 80% of the response or the results. In a recent conversation I was having with a real estate business owner that I coach, we identified that all of his recent open house success was not coming from the event or the follow-up. It was all coming from the doors he was knocking prior to the actual open house event. He was creating more relationships, inviting more people, and generating more potential sales prospects than any other, uh, component making up that whole open house sequence, that open house system. So I said, I said, I got to ask you a question then. If you're getting the greatest response out of the door knocking, why only knock 10 doors? Why not knock 40? And his response, which is the right response, is, well, I don't know if I have time to do that because I've got to take care of all these other things with respect to the open house. To which I said, Well, they're the least important thing. So why don't we focus a little less on that? Let's clean up the open house system by focusing on the 20% that's generating 80% of the result versus treating everything equally. See, in this open house system, this open house system got a little bit too robust. It got a little too complex. It got a little too unfocused. And the reality is fine-tuning it, cleaning it up and dialing it down to, to a focus on the front end of the open house system generated the greatest result. So for you, I want you to look at your systems in business, in health, in relationships, in everything that comprises your world. And I want you to ask, hey, is this system as efficient as it once was? And if the answer is it's not quite as efficient, then I would challenge you to ask, okay, of all of the components making up this system, what is most impacting the result? And how could I double or triple down on that area and eliminate, or at least limit the noise coming from all of those other areas? It's time to clean up our systems, especially if you believe that where our economy and things are headed, you know, we're in for leaner times. We have to squeeze more out of what we're doing than ever before. In order to do that, we've got to be lean. We've got to make— we've got to tighten up our systems. We've got to create more efficiency. That's all we have for today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.