Confessions Of A Business Process Consultant

One thing I wanted to do is get James to introduce himself, talk a little bit about the work that he does, maybe how he came across systemology. And James, if you could share any sage words, if you had your time again, what do you wish you would have known? What might have you done differently? I think that'd help everybody.

Thanks, Dave. Hi everyone. Good to see some new faces. Really excited for you about the ride you're going to have. So, yeah. So a little bit about me. I have ran a family business, a motel, for probably the last close to 20 years. And I had systemized the business pretty much to the point that I wasn't needed in the business. And I spent all my time basically binging business development and everything about business development and just basically tested and tuned with all the ideas I had coming in on that business, even though that particular business work for some of those situations. And I, by about 2018, I decided that I was going to go off and do business coaching. I had all this knowledge, I wanted to, you know, deploy it. And I really enjoyed sort of helping people get insights and, you know, things like that. And I didn't really know what particularly I wanted to help people with. So I just started going out and doing general business coaching. And I had a client come up to my office and at the motel and I'd. I wasn't really working the business, but I just come on site and people are coming in at me and saying, oh, this is happening or this is broken. Why is this doing this? And I'd had a fairly terrible morning and basically my client came in for a coaching session. He's like, wow, you are living the dream. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got, you know, and mind you, like, so I'm up in my office now, I've got a really nice view and things like that just happens to be where the motel is located. And he's like, well, you know, you've systemize your business so you don't need to work in it anymore and you've gone off and pursued things you're passionate about. I was like, yeah, okay, okay, that was. And I hadn't, you know, I hadn't necessarily paused to think about that. So. But what I wanted to help people with, I didn't realize it in the moment, but I realize it now is I wanted to help people stop working in their business. And what better tool than systemology? I know a lot about the tech side of things. I know a lot about, you know, getting the most out of your team. But. But systems. I had systemized my business, but I didn't know the best way to do it. I probably got about a thousand procedures in that motel, and the overwhelming amount of information in some of those just makes people's eyes glaze over. And that was one of the first things I learned from Dave, was keeping it simple. I mean, I've got an engineering background, and keeping things simple is the most important thing. And that was for me with systemology. And I keep learning it is. What's the most simple avenue that you can sort of go down. When I'm working with clients, when I'm actually doing done for you, I'm constantly having to keep myself in check about, is this simple enough? Am I making it easy enough? Because I used to go down the path of making it such that people could walk in off the street and do the job. That was how I thought that you should write procedures. And I was just wrong. Straight out wrong. It was not the way to do it. Please don't ever do that. Don't do that to the people that have to do the job on the end of it. Because it's so much information overwhelmed. So once the team members experienced, they just. It's like, yeah, but where does the information about how I actually need to do my job? Because I know how to do it. I just need some tips, you know, things like that. So, yeah, so in terms of my experience of going through the cohort, the first thing that really struck me was just the caliber of my peers was in the first group was, you know, a lawyer that works in the Hague and does, you know, international war crime trials. And other people have sailed around the world and. But also people who had been really, really successful in their own businesses, in their. In their own, you know, whether it was starting small and just develop the business to, you know, get them personal freedom so they can pursue other things. So really well. Just not just educated, but life experience. The caliber of that from the. The team and the cohort was amazing, but also the generosity. There's a saying I remember hearing years ago is good people know good people. And seeing that within the actual. The cohorts, not just the first one, but the other ones are seeing come through, and everyone's very much aligned. I think you have to be the right, certain type of person to sort of be interested in systems. A little bit weird in inside, maybe, but. Yeah, but I've also noticed the same type of thing through the actual team within systemology, because, Dave, I'm not sure how many people? When I started was there like four or five people in the team?

Yes, that's probably about right. It's probably tripled now. If not attach more.

And everyone I've talked to, it's, you know, a five minute conversation has turned into more like an hour conversation. Not because people are rambling, but just because there's this great flow of ideas. And what's become really evident is that Systemology and all the team within Systemology really walk the talk. They are all about really trying to create impact for small businesses. That's very, very clear. So that degree of integrity plus a real focus on continuous improvement just makes it a great bunch of people to work with. So that's been reassuring that, you know, when I went through the first cohort, there was this very clear approach that you are going to go through this course and tear it apart and build it better for the next group that comes through. And for me that was, that was what really appealed to me because that's just the way I like to do things. But as I've gone through and seen some of the ideas that Dave's and other team have brought into the business, people, I don't know if many or any of you know Guy by Simon Bowen, he's the models guy. So before coming into Systemology, I'd never sold like in my business. I'd done it a little bit here and there, but I'd never actually had to do selling. And so that was a really big point of, I wouldn't say anxiety, but it was something I. It was a whole new territory that I hadn't played in before and I had known of Simon Bond. And when I heard that and I saw that Dave was doing using Sion Bond's tools, it just gave me the world of confidence that if you don't already know, basically it's drawing based selling, which sounds weird, but it allows people to zero pressure. You help people see where they're at and they pick for themselves. You don't have to tell them. They already know when you're sort of presenting the information and then they basically choose what's the most appropriate thing for them. Absolutely. I can't like, I can't emphasize zero pressure enough. So. Sign Bowen B O W E N Just for Miranda. But yeah, it is. I mean, I'm so excited for you to see the Sign Bowen expert session that we had maybe only a month ago because it is crazy, really, really crazy. But just in terms of some things that maybe I wouldn't say necessarily hard Fought lessons, but things that I had learned going through and starting to work with clients that I wish I had burnt in the back of my eyelids. Follow the process, but when you're working with clients, do it in a chronological order. You've probably all been familiar with a critical client flow by now and you'll start to go and do done for use with clients at a point in the not too distant future. Make sure you do it in a chronological order. Dave was on a sort of call with me for one of my first coaching clients and everything seemed fine. And then we got to the very end of building out the critical client flow and then we're like, oh, hang on, is that that way? And they're like, oh, I think so. It's like, oh, no. And then we started to go through the process and things became apparent as we're going through. So yeah, if you don't do it in a chronological order, you miss all the nuance about why they do things and where things have value as you go through the process. Another thing that I haven't done myself, and because I haven't done it, I can say you very much should find a niche. If you haven't found a niche, find one. Because it is so much, so much more challenging to do. And I like challenges. That's a little bit perverse of me, but it's so much harder to do when you're walking into a new industry every time you work with a client. I recently started working with someone who's in construction. I've done building before, but not construction. And they're talking about BOQs and other acronyms that are relating to building codes and things like that. Just completely outside my scope. And there's a little bit of fake it till you make it, but there's very little fake it till you make it that you can do when you're trying to ask people really good questions about why certain things are important. So niching super important. And one thing I'm so glad that we start up just probably halfway through the first cohort is the buddy system. The buddy system is so valuable. Use it and maximize your use with it such that you make all as many mistakes as possible with a nice soft audience. Yeah, that was really good. And it's really great for building relationships and being able side years off of other systemologists as you go through the process.