Live Q&A: Six Principles for Building a Sustainable, Self-Operating Business | Titan Impact Group

Okay, so welcome, everybody. Super excited that you're here. This is the Q and A section of this, which is pretty awesome. And I know that on Tuesday when we did this, it was just getting you the information and hopefully you had time to digest it and then come back and ask questions about all of this. So you can raise your hands, you can. And I can bring you on. If you don't want to do that, you can just put it in the chat. I can have the questions be answered that way. And this really is meant to be more interactive, so you guys can, you know, really dig into all of this. So just a refresher, you know, on what we did. So obviously Raul was here. And Raoul, do you want to just again, summarize, like, what. What it was that. Who you are, and then what you talked about on Tuesday?

Sure. Hi, I'm Raoul West. I'm owner of RAL West Living the Dream. And I have an online course that teaches entrepreneurs six basic principles for operating their business in a way that gives them more freedom and where they can live the life that they want. And the business does not own you. You're the owner, not the oper. Your business. So we went over all six of the principles and talked about many strategies and ways that. That business owners can. Can have a better life and a more successful business.

Yeah, I love that.

So.

We had. So, okay, so back over this. Just ask questions. So some of the questions that people ask. So let's go over some of these, because I know sometimes for me, I have questions, but I don't actually know what the questions are. So it always helps to, like, hear what other questions are and then answer it from there. So let's just start going through these, and I think that'll help spur on other ideas of questions that they might have.

All right, let's go. So the first one, you know, how do you start building the systems? So you just start with the easiest thing. Start with documenting what you do every day. What are. What are your tasks? What. What is eating up your time. And then you can start to group, like, tasks together or maybe identify some tasks that could be simplified by using technology like an AI tool or an app that helps you organize your. Your day. And then you can go from there to documenting the actual steps and processes so that you can teach those steps to someone else and that they have the, basically a step by step manual for how this particular job gets done and what it's supposed to look like when it's finished as a. As a good job. You Know.

Right, okay, so some of the other questions. Here were some other questions. Oh, this is a good one. Number three.

Yeah, well, how to delegate tasks. Micromanaging. I think this is a great question because I don't think everybody knows how to properly delegate. There's an art to it. And one of the main rules in delegating is that you have to be very, very clear with instructions and with your outcome, you know, outlined so that they know what it is you're looking for at the end of this task. And again, just what does a good job look like? So the more clear you are with your expectations and the more clear you are with the processes that need to be followed, the better you'll do at delegating and feeling comfortable that the job is going to get done the way you want to. And then you don't need to micromanage. But it is.

No, I love that. Yeah. And I just want to. So we have found this and I find, like for me, I'm a business owner that is always operating at like the 50,000 foot level. And so the details of it are, they just elude me, quite frankly. And what we've discovered. So we build out custom GPTs for companies and help implement AI. And once we did that, that whole thing changed for me because I literally could do exactly what you're saying. Like, I'd say what the task was, what the ultimate, what the outcome was. And then I would give the GPT the instruction to give extremely detailed instructions based on inside of my custom GPT. So it, it knows the company culture, all that, and it literally. And I would say, you know, so that I can copy and paste it and hand it over to my VA or whoever. And when I did that, that was a game changer for me, like literally being able to delegate and not have the brain damage of having to come up with like all the, the minor details that are so critical.

Right. I think that's, that's excellent and that there's one more step though, and that is to make sure that you do the follow through, to make sure that things were done correctly. You don't want to, you know, delegate and then walk away entirely. So there's a balance between micromanaging and then never following through. Because sometimes maybe there was a lack of clarity somewhere that you thought it was perfectly clear what needed to be done and maybe it wasn't. So you need to follow through, have some feedback loops, have some, you know, check ins along the way to make sure that it's being done the way you want. And then you can have that. That security of knowing. Yes, it's. It's perfect. It's. It's happening the way I want it to.

Right. We always say in our company, trust and verify.

Yes, that's a Reagan expression that I love. We use it a lot.

I trust that they did it right. And we're going to verify.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

I think this next question is really big for a lot of people, and it really is about the fostering a strong company culture, I think, that eludes a lot of people. You know what I mean? Like, the whole, like, how do you do that? Like, it's. It's a nice concept, but what does it look like?

I think people neglect to actually be conscious about it. They. They just end up with a culture that happened, you know, by acc, and it might not be the culture that they really want. So you have to sit down and decide, what do you want your company to stand for? What are your values and principles, and what are the company goals? The mission statement, however you want to put it, but really clearly outline it and put it in writing and then communicate it clearly to your entire team, whether they're employees or all the other vendors that you might work with. Make sure they understand what's important to you, and then communicate it also to your customers and to your community at large. Because this is. This is the statement that you're making about what my company is and what it stands for. And you want to make sure that it. That you're saying the right thing. And then, you know, back to the trust but verify. Check in every once in a while and make sure that you're really living up to your own principles and values and make. Make sure that you're being consistent in that way.

So when you say communicate it, like, to your staff, your customers, your vendors, like, what does that look like?

Well, it can be in writing. We would put it in our training documents when we hired new employees. We put that right up front. This is the company guiding principles. These are our values. This is what we stand for. This is what's important to us. And as far as customers go, let them know. You can put it in your written communications. You can put it on your website. There's many different ways to communicate it. And sometimes I walk into a business and I see their mission statement or their value statement up on a wall. Wall on a nice framed, you know, plaque or. Or poster. And that's nice, you know, especially if it says something about how important their customers are. Customers appreciate that. So I think there's many, many opportunities to. To talk about it, to write it down, and to communicate it to all of your various constituencies.

Yeah, I can see it's definitely a. Something that needs to be done consistently. Like, it's not just a one and done. It's an ongoing training reminding.

Correct. Yeah.

With.

With all of these principles. It's not. It's not a set it and forget it. You have to keep revisiting them at regular intervals. Maybe it's twice a year, Four times a year would be great, but absolutely no less than once a year. And, you know, these things can morph. Right, over time. So perhaps your culture starts, you know, to be one thing, and then as you grow and the company grows, maybe it, maybe it shifts a bit and you need to be able to incorporate that shift or that evolution in your. Your new company. Statement of purpose and vision.

Yeah, I love that. So do any of you have questions or comments or anything we can bring you on or you can just chat?

Hello. Hello.

Can y' all Hear us? Put a 1 in the chat if you can hear us. Maybe it's just you and I talking.

Oh, nice to be with you, Catherine.

Okay, they can hear us. Okay. Does anybody have any comments on this? I know we've all worked for companies and. Or had companies or, you know, any valuable insights?

Well, maybe I could ask a question of them. It's like, how many of you are using systems in your business right now? You can put a yes or a no in the chat.

Adam. Nice. Yeah, we had a great conversation with Adam about his and a bunch of stuff he's doing.

And another question might be, are you using technology for your systems?

Amen. Yes.

Yeah.

Fantastic. And how many of you are using AI as part of that?

Yes, yes. I think AI is my new boyfriend.

He always says, you know, and gosh, you know, it scared me to death when I first, first started using it.

It's like, oh, my God, I don't.

Know how to do.

I.

You know, I jumped in and I got a little guidance and, you know, there's lots of things that you can learn about how to use it. And so my proficiency at using it AS has greatly increased, and now I'm using AI and things like, you know, organizing my email inbox. What is Adam saying here?

He's saying for some things, but working on fully using it. That's awesome, Adam.

Yeah, yeah, Adam, you know, chat, GPT definitely has a learning curve. And I know my daughter's a teacher and Australia, and she was telling me how she uses Chat GPT to, to prompt for giving guidance to her, her lessons and telling her students how to, how to do their assignments. She's an English teacher and boy, you know, she just made my eyes roll back into my head with how complicated her prompts were. But I gradually started learning how to improve my prompts. And then I learned tips from other people about how, well, if you don't get the result that you want the first time, refeed it, you know, go back into Chat GPT and say, okay, this was okay, but you got to work on this. This was not quite right. It didn't hit the target and it'll keep going, coming back to you again and again. I, I just used it yesterday to come up with an agreement between myself and a vendor. And I, I have to, you know, say that it took me three or four tries to get the, the wording exactly right. But then in the end it was like done and it took like 15 minutes instead of me taking an hour or two to, to draft this agreement.

So the other thing I found which was really helpful is like, I'll have the GPT up on my computer, but then I use the app on my phone and I'll stand up and walk around because the more we can like stay in our flow state because when we're typing, we get out of our flow state. We're in our head. And so when I stand up and I just talk and just get all my thoughts and ideas out about that thing and just keep going, going, going. The, the output of what GPT gives me is so much better than if I actually just sat there typing it. So much better. And that's is that AI is meant to take all the mundane tasks off our list, even like typing. Right? And that's the beauty of when we can just talk it out and just let our thoughts flow. All of a sudden those prompts for AI get so much better.

You know, I need to do that more because I'm a terrible typist. I waste a lot of time correcting both. I should just talk to it. Yeah, it's a great idea.

It's huge. Huge. And so even. Here's the other thing we're talking about. Yeah, Khan Academy, I love them. It's been interesting because one of my friends actually built an emotional regulator. And so literally it allows you to have an actual two way conversation. She's talking, you're talking. And I mean, it's extraordinary like how it's able to even coach through people having conflicts with each other. Right. And be able to actually work through that. That's been a game changer for. I mean, I've shared it with so many people, but it's, again, it comes down to the, like, getting into the place of actually talking to it versus typing it. Like, so if you all need to get. You know, again, the greatest thing we could do is get better at prompting. Right? And inside of all this, building these systems and tracking. So one of the things that I did this past weekend, inside of, like, building all this out for our company is for one of my companies, we have the whole business plan and everything. And then there was a shift in what was the. In the market and what was happening. And so we have to, like, just step to the side, one step and do something. And we have to do this whole thing so that this now precedes what we're doing over here. And so what I did is I just, I. I uploaded the business plan to the GPT and it's my custom GPT, so it has all the things, but. And I put it in there, and then I literally got on and I just started walking around and talking about what it is, where. Where we were, what happened in the market and why we have to shift. And now what I'm looking to do, and I went through all the things and it wrote it all out. And then I said. I said, now I want you to pretend that you are Warren Buffett and Richard Branson and Tony Robbins and Ray Dalio, and I want all of you to look at my plan, poke all the holes in it, tell me all the unintended consequences, tell me everywhere where it's going to fail, and then I want you to come back with solutions for all of it. Then I want you all to debate with all of your solutions and problems and come up with one plan that all of you 100% agree on. That's like, knocks it out of the ballpark that all four of you would say, absolutely, I'm in. So chat literally goes through, and I could see what Warren Buffett was saying, what Tony Robbins was saying, Richard Branson, like, I could see what everybody was actually saying in the whole dialogue back and forth. And then it came up with a plan, and it was like, we are all in. This is the plan. Amazing. But it came from, congratulations. But it came from me talking to it rather than just sitting down trying to type it out.

Yeah, I like that.

And I tell, like, I tell my clients, I'm like, okay, stand up. Okay, now stand up. Now talk. Stand, talk. And Walk around, because there's something about when we get our bodies involved and we have that freedom, there's just more that comes out of our mind than just sitting there, you know, typing away. Anyway, so.

Yeah, that's excellent, Catherine. I want to go back to Laura saying AI clones are the best. Laura, can you tell us a little bit more about what. What your experience is with AI clones?

Here, let me. She's probably talking about my clown. Hold on. I'm bringing her on. Laura, I'm bringing you on. Come on. There she is. All right.

I didn't expect you to bring me on. I was doing a shameless plug for your clone.

AI clone for a cat.

So Catherine has an AI clone. If you haven't gone and checked it out, you can go to KatherineBell AI. And it's pretty extraordinary. Catherine and I have been friends for 26 years, so, you know, he'll answer my call at 3am but it's kind of fun to talk to her clone every once in a while, too. So I had a good time trying to stump the clone. But that's.

That gives a whole new meaning to what I. What I say about duplicating yourself.

Right?

It's really duplicating yourself.

Yeah, it really is. And it's extraordinary. I mean, I've.

And.

And I've used it as a way of introducing people to AI, so I've brought a lot of people to, like, oh, you should go check out my best friend. Go have a convers with my best friend. So it's. Yeah, it's a very. I mean, this is. It's not going away. AI is here.

I think we have to accept that. In fact, I just said on a podcast yesterday, if you're not on AI yet, you better jump on it, because it's here to stay. So, yeah, do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. AI has been an absolute game changer for me. And, I mean, all of you can go check it out. It's Katherine Bell. AI. But what's. And there's a text, but I invite everybody to go have a voice conversation with her. She's pretty. She's pretty extraordinary. And what it is people like, well, where's the information? It's the information that I've uploaded into it.

Right.

And so she talks about my investments. She talks about the family mastermind. She talks about. I mean, she coaches people through a ton of stuff, from marketing to investing. Like. Like, pretty much. She only answered one question incorrectly, and that was. Somebody asked it two days ago what was my favorite game. And she asked, she answered it wrong, but I could see the answer. And so I went back and actually corrected it. So the next time anybody comes around, that answer will be corrected. But everything else is like dead on to the point of I have investments, so I've got PPMs and there's a whole world of legal around this, but because I've uploaded everything into it, it. We're good. Yeah. Like literally perfectly. And it's cool because I have other people raising capital for my investment and they, rather than them talking about my investment, they'll pull up my clone on their phone and they'll have their investor talk to the clone and they don't even have to say anything. She'll answer all the questions exactly how it needs to be answered. So it's like, and we always joke, you know, I should clone myself. They literally did it. Like the amount of my calendar has dropped dramatically from all the conversations it's been having.

Now we just need to make sure that, that our clone doesn't like, sign legal documents that we're not aware of and that sort of thing, you know.

No, it's, it's. Yeah, it's. It. The only, the. All of what's in there is only what I've uploaded. It's my content. That's it. So we have full control over it.

We uploaded my entire course, my online course into Chat GPT and then we're using that to help us create content for LinkedIn, you know, the, the posts and newsletters and things. So it's all my material, but it just. Chat GPT just pulls it out of my material and organizes it for us so myself and my va. And saves us hours and hours of time. But it, but it's, but it's not made up. It's. It's my stuff and, and it's learning my voice. It's learning, you know, the way I talk or the way I write. So it, it sounds pretty legit.

It's, it's amazing. Again, it's the whole point, like doing a mundane task so we can stay focused on what we're really good at.

Yeah. And I think that that's the whole point here is that you have to use all these tools, all the leverage, your team, everything, so that you can get above it. And as Katherine referred to it from the 50,000 foot level, but even at the 10,000 foot level is better than being in the weeds. But you need to step back and work on your business and have an idea and a vision for where you want your business to be 10 years, 20 years down the road. But before that, think about what you want your life to be like 10 or 20 or 30 years down the road. And then make sure that your business is the type of business that will support you in having the life that you really want. And we're all different, so all of our wants and needs along those lines will be unique. And you know what, what makes floats my boat, if you will, is, you know, being able to have time for travel and luxury cruises and things like that. But, you know, that might not interest somebody else. So that. That's part of my living the dream.

Yeah, your version of the American dream, which is exactly what Titan Impact Group is about. I love that.

Yeah.

So that's beautiful. Thank you all for being here. I think what you're doing is, like, critical for businesses being successful. So thank you for, you know, having. Creating this amazing, successful company and then turning around and turning it into, like, taking all that wisdom and now pouring it into future businesses. Like, how great is that?

Well, thank you. And I'll just add one thing, and that's it. I have a newsletter on LinkedIn that's free, and every week we come out with all kinds of tips and strategies that you can use in your business. So subscribe to the newsletter.

Nice. I love that. Okay, guys, thank you. Thank you. Have an extraordinary rest of the week, and then we'll be back next week for our next webinar. Awesome. Thank you, everyone. Bye for now.

Bye.