Million Dollar Coach - Rob Morgan

But there's something about systems that creates some stability and consistency, that if you are a little bit tech driven, you love working with people you're not shy in front of, meeting new people. You don't need to be an extrovert and get yourself out there, but just start. So make a decision to commit, make a decision to commit in one direction. And then once you read the book, you need to polish it within your own life.

Hello and welcome. It's with great pleasure that I get to shine a light on one of our systemologists, Rob Morgan. To today we get to celebrate him hitting the million dollar mark in revenue as a systemologist in a little over three years. And I really wanted to just dig into the process, being a systems guy myself and Rob as well. If we can dig in and uncover some of the systems and processes that got in there, like, I want to know what worked, what didn't, and how others can follow in his footsteps. I think hitting that million dollar mark is a fantastic accomplishment for any coach or consultant because it takes a certain level of skill and focus and a proven process to get maybe. First things first. Rob, can you just tell us a little bit about your backstory and how you got started just before you became a systemologist?

Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Dave. And let me just say this is actually quite a pleasure to be joining you for this topic because I think this is something that I've been striving for for a while and it's really good to know that it can be done and you get yourself a goal and you follow the goal and repeat the process and you get to where you need to be. So I'm actually really proud to be sitting here with you talking about this. So I think it all started back when I was doing IT support for 25 years, fixing computers, doing all that. We know the story. And just a day to day, how many billable hours can you do in a day? How many billable hours can you do in a week? And then add it up and then work realize you're doing 60, 70, 80 hours a week. So when I found that I needed to remove myself from the day to day of the emergency, you know, putting fires out on the computers and doing all of that kind of thing, I knew that I needed to shift my business model and my brain because I needed to kind of relieve the pressure, the tension that I was feeling back then. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. But I had 25 years experience of working with small business and business owners and going well, I got something there you know, and so when I stumbled across the Systemology book, and actually it was Den Lenny that recommended me the book, and I was like, oh, I've never heard of it, but I'll find it. And I found it and I read it. Then I read it again and then I was doing a drive to Hunter Valley to a Mastermind session and it was a four hour drive and I listened to the entire audio on the way up and on the way back. And my Mastermind session that weekend that I was working on is I announced everyone that I was going to become a systemologist. All right. And that became my quarterly 90 day sprint kind of goal and made myself accountable. So 90 days later is when everyone said to me, how are you going? And I said, I'm doing it, I'm working on it, I'm getting there. This is it. I found it. So I knew that I needed to do something within consulting. I knew I need something, maybe a business coach or something, some sort of mentor, but didn't know how to do that, didn't know what the process was. But once I read the book, I went, there are the tools that I need to follow to then become that consultant that I've always wanted to be. How do I support business owners in that journey now?

How would you describe the role of a systemologist and what a systemologist is now that you're kind of in it? How do you explain what you do?

I think it's actually shifted. At first I thought I was the systems geek and I was like a bit of a robot going, we're going to record you, then we're going to document what you do and all of that. And it kind of started in that kind of mindset, through the conversations and life experiences with business owners. Do you think that everything they do is a business problem? Do you think every challenge they have is a business challenge? I've learned to be a business mentor. I've learned how to be a friend, I've learned how to be a business coach. I've even learned how to be a life coach through this process. So what I love about it is if you love working with people and you love, you know, making a list, you love being organized in very, very methodical way, then you're going to love this job because it's not a job, it's actually just paying you supporting people. So I see clients looking at me now as friends, but also a trusted advisor. They probably see me as a bit of a systems nerd, but there's a some. There's some stability and consistency around that. So when I meet with clients every week or every two weeks, whatever that feels like for them, I work around their schedule. They know that when they meet with me, they're getting the same Rob Morgan, they're getting the same person who got my systems hat on today. And one plus one equals two. There's no doubt about it. Right. So today we're going to cover this and we're going to record this, we're going to document this and we're going to share it and see how that works within your business. Then I'm going to show you how to implement that across the team so you become a systems driven business. And that is the probably most powerful message I have as being when I sell, when I say to people I'm a systemologist, they go, what do you mean? I said I help businesses systemize the business so the business owner can create a freedom business. That's my goal. Yeah, I love it.

When you got started, you mentioned you kind of made that commitment in the mastermind group and you said, okay, for the next 90 days this is going to be a sprint. Can you kind of talk us through those first 90 days and what you went through just to kind of get yourself up and running?

Yep. Well, one of the things we learned when I first saw on the systemology.com website the big become a systemologist. When I found that, that was my first win, right. Because I realized that there's more to just reading the book if this is the area you want to be in. So when I looked at the process, it was like, find yourself a case study. And I thought, what does that mean? Like how do we find a case study? Then it was basically, I trusted the process to basically say find a client that you can work with that'll put up with your mistakes. That's patient. You know them well enough that they can say, hey, I'm happy to work with you. And, and if it's not right the first time, I'm okay with that. I'll be patient with you and work with you. So I found two case studies straight away and said, I'm going to do it for free. Let's meet once a week and let's just. I'm just going to look at this system for creating systems. I'm going to keep my eye on that and follow that until I get it right. And yep, it was wrong. Yep. Bill Doer, who was my checking me out to make sure that I was doing it right, failed me the first time because he just said, it's not there yet, Rob, you'll get there. But it's just not that I'm not sure how to find things. And I look back and I said, God, you're actually right. Even I can't find it. So it's not a perfect system up front for me or for anyone, because I think I felt I was trying to fix it, I was trying to create my own spin on it. And I realized that it's simple, it doesn't have to be that complicated. Just get it done to a certain point where it makes sense. And that if you imagine some 15 year old kid who knows nothing about your industry suddenly reading a process on how to do something and it makes sense to him or her, then you nailed it. Yeah, yeah. That's the first 90 days of understanding that.

Were there any challenges outside of, hey, just follow the process, like whether it's stuff that was going on in your head or just that you had to navigate through. On your journey to become a million dollar systemologist, what did you have to kind of overcome?

I think the first thing, and Eric Putman put it really well, nicely to me in a sledgehammer sort of way, is you don't need to try to fix it, you don't need to try to change it, you just need to trust it. And so I kept creating my own spreadsheets, I kept creating my, oh, I want to do this with this, I've been doing it for 25 years. And all of that, you have to just let the flow go. And I think the most important thing I learned is that when you are working with a business, trying to help them create business freedom, help the business owner remove them from the day to day operations, is that you don't trying to change their business. We're simply taking a snapshot of what they're currently doing so that we can go right, I'm going to record and I'm going to extract, record and document exactly how you're doing that. It's down the track, you start to look at ways that you can optimize. So I tried too soon. I was going straight into the optimization stage while I was doing a critical client flow in stage one. And that didn't work that way. You've got to follow the steps one through seven because you can't get to step two by any assigning anything unless you define what you're talking about in the first place. And so I was learning that process along the way.

I think what I've loved most watching you Grow into the coach that you are today. Also, like, you just throw your hat over the fence at every opportunity, whether it's, hey, do you want to present on a webinar? Hey, do you want to do a speaking opportunity? Hey, whatever it is, you're just like, feel the fear and do it anyway. I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that.

Well, I think that was. I probably learned a lot of that through Sean Soell. And Sean Sewell is my best friend. He's my business partner. He's also my coach. He's my business mentor. Right. And we've known each other for over 20 years. And he's always telling me to step away from the screens, stop hiding behind. Behind the monitors, get out there, meet people, meet business owners. So I started to say yes, and the first person who started asking me if I wanted to present was Sean. And the first person that I needed to present with was you. And so here we are in Darwin, while I was in Darwin, and I'm about to present on stage with Dave Jennings. I'm nervous as hell. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't sleep for three weeks. And then the day came. Covid came, locked you out, sent you back to Melbourne, got me on stage about a week later, and I presented for the first time. And I remember Sean saying, do you want me to jump up on stage and give you a hand? I went, no, I've got this. You just sit back there and relax. Because by the time I got to that point, I was so comfortable in what I've learned so far. I've become so passionate about what I've learned so far, became so in love with the systems and became this mentor for others for the first time. I was actually helping others and teaching other business owners and others just around me how to get things done. I was actually, for the first time, sharing my knowledge as opposed to always being the student. I felt myself getting to the front of the classroom. So there I was, standing up on stage for an hour and a half, doing a bit of a workshop for the first time. And since then, I've presented to many podcasts, YouTube channels. Been on stage again with you again in Noosa the other week. It is just a process of saying yes and yes. It's nerve wracking. Yes, I know the feelings, but the feeling that you get when you finish presenting outweighs the nervousness of presenting in the first place. I think they say that the people have more fear of death than public speaking. And I Get it? But it starts with just saying yes, getting out of your comfort zone, and then saying yes to standing in front of a group of people, saying yes to presenting and doing a webinar. Even though there are only two people show up, be aware that those recordings can be repurposed, they can be reused. You can use them a thousand times. The joy is in the build up. The joy is in understanding it. Once you know something well enough and you're comfortable with it and you're passionate about it, it's not actually nervous anymore. It's now just you just telling your story.

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick. But you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now. I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video.

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Along the way, I feel like you've picked up quite a few wins and got feedback. I don't know if there's any proud moments that come to mind with wins that you've got from clients.

Yeah, there's a, there's a couple, but one that stands out the most was when I had a business owner. I've been working with their, their team for about six months and we've just been slowly working with, through the process. I'm still quite new in the, in the systemology world. I'm still learning my way through it, but getting better at it, getting more confident. And he came up to me, one of the networking events, one of my mastermind events within a circle. And he hugged me and he said, rob, you've saved my business. And I said, oh, Craig, that's amazing. That's so nice to hear. He goes, no, no, I think you really, you saved my marriage as well. And be honest, I think you saved my life. Like, you don't get that from fixing computers. Like the 25 years of fixing computers was, hey, Rob, my computer's running great. That dopamine fix is great for about an hour or two. I love my job. This is so good. I'm so proud of myself. And then 24 hours later, the computer's broken and you're no longer the best friend. This stuff that we're teaching and helping business owners is. You can't unlearn it. It is lifetime. It is changing people's lives. It is creating them to go away with their family on holidays and come back and the business is running better without them. Like what dopamine fix can you get that's above and beyond that, outside of your wedding day, that kind of thing? Or there's something so memorable that you'll never forget it. These are the events that I get that are so amazing that I will never ever take for granted the opportunity to help another business owner again. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. The better you get at it, the more you want to do it. Yeah. And it evolves from that point.

For the potential systemologist or new systemologist that's watching this now, if we were to distill things down into a system or a process like a good systemologist would and we think about getting started as a systemologist, like what, what are those first five steps, 10 steps or what, what process would you go through to achieve the result which is to become a million dollar systemologist?

Yeah, I think 1. Commit, decide this is what you want to do. You know, you might say, I want to become a business coach. Right. Where do you start? You go to action business coaching. You become an emyth coach, like whatever that direction takes you. But there's something about systems that creates some stability and consistency that if you are a little bit tech driven, you love working with people you're not shy in front of, meeting new people. You don't need to be an extrovert and get yourself out there, but just start. So make a decision to commit. Make a decision to commit in one direction and then once you read the book, you need to polish it within your own life. So the seven stages of systemology become your everyday system. So I don't go shopping without a list. I record everything I do in my house in case we go on holidays. Everything's recorded and it's documented and it's a QR code in my kitchen. Like it is just, it becomes your day to day living. Right. That's once you commit to the one thing. The seven stages of systemology is what you need to embed in part of your DNA. And then the next thing is just by default you're out there telling people what you do. You're at a barbecue, what do you do? I'm A systemologist. You're a what? Systemologist. What does that mean? Oh, let me tell you, you're not just saying I fix computers or I'm in IT or I do tech or whatever like that. When you say systemologist, it's a trademark. It is a name that no one else owns that much. I've never heard of it before until I've read the book, Right? So you become that systemologist. You network, you go to events, you say yes to public speaking. You go and find yourself a jv, a joint venture partner and say, would you like me to recommend or refer clients to you? Yes.

Great.

Can you refer clients to me? Yes. Great. There's an agreement. Whether that agreement be with a business partner where you're exchanging clients, whether you say, here's a percentage of my sales, here's a gift voucher, whatever that looks like, those are the best referrals to get, are the warm ones you get. Because those are the ones that say, hey, you know what? I've read the book. I'm already, I'm already sold. Right. That book has become gold. I always have a minimum of 100 books in my office because one book's going out every week and sometimes it's going out to a bit random and others just haven't read it, they want to know more. And others I've just bumped into on the side of things at Woolies go shopping and talking about it and I go, I'm going to get you the book. Like, wow, that's amazing. How much do I owe you? It's like it's a gift. So we gift the book because without that book, they don't understand the whole process and whole flow of it, but once they read it, they get it and there's a light bulb moment for them. So that's the part of giving a gift. So the trick for me is a deal is never dead. You never have a lost deal. So you nurture everyone you meet, every client, potential client that's read the book, they fall in love with the process whether they're ready or they're not ready. You have a nurturing sequence. So get a good CRM. Have a CRM says deal in book giveaway coffee call, Deep dive, quote sent, quote approved. Yep. Because you got to make an assumption that the quote's going to get approved. If they don't do anything about it now, they might not be ready. Now you don't mark it off as lost. You call out a follow up and you follow up in a month or three months. Six months or 12 months or 24 months. How's your journey going now? Are you ready to start talking about systems? So it's consistency. And once you finish that, you then go back to going out and finding other places you can go to find another JV partner. Say yes to jumping on stage, say yes to a podcast, and just repeat the process again and again and again. And it's just a. It's a numbers game. Like any other business. Any business owner you've ever speak spoken to is going to have that same process. But be consistent. My wife was in real estate for seven years. You know where the numbers game in real estate is? She goes out and spends four hours knocking on doors, right? So she's knocked on 200 doors. Out of 200, three people let her in. Out of those three people, one person's probably ready to sell their house. It's a numbers game. But if you go and knock on 20 doors, your, your options are very limited. So the more people you can get in front of, the more people you can speak to, the more of an opportunity you have. We all know that if you do a webinar, 50 people register, 10 people show up, one person might be ready. Do two webinars, do a webinar that brings in 100 people, because then maybe 50 show up and then 20 may be ready to go. So it's just about the numbers of being consistent and never giving up and never getting to a point where you're saying this is all too hard. I can't get leads, I don't know where they're coming from, I don't know what I'm doing. Give a book away. Start with giving a gift. Go to and do a webinar for free and just educate and teach and share you what you've learned through this process. And when you share that without asking for anything in return, more people will come to you because they want to be with someone like you who's not desperate. They're deliberate. We're deliberately sending the systemology message out to the world. We're not desperately trying to find clients because we don't need to be because we have an amazing opportunity to share the knowledge with them as you kind.

Of tell your story. And over the time that we've known each other, I try and look at what are the common or what are the traits that make you successful. And I know, I mean, you've got a genuine desire to help business owners. I think you're persistent and consistent. I think you are happy to throw your Hat over the fence and get amongst it. You've got, you're reasonably comfortable with tech. Also with your tech background. I don't know if there are any other qualities that you think of. If you're thinking of some of our best performing systemologists, if there's anything common amongst them.

I think the, the biggest one for me is actually of all the things is we've known each other for, for almost four years. Four years now. God, that's gone fast. But I think being humble, not knowing everything, or if you know it, you don't need to boast it because I've become a very good listener over the last four years because initially I thought I could do it better or I can teach you something better. Oh, we're talking about tech. Maybe I can, maybe I can teach them something that I've learned over 30 years. But that's not what that's about. That's not what our role is. Our role is to become very, very good listeners and the ability to allow them, to allow business owners to express what they're doing, whether that's right or wrong, and recorded what, exactly what they're doing and, and, and have that compassion to say, I, I really want to help you do this. Let's just record everything you're doing and let's then review it and look at it to see if that makes sense. Because if that, if that little process there is taking you 10 minutes a day and, and you remove that because it's a distraction, that's a week, a year. Wouldn't you like to take a week off that year and come back in the business running better without you? So the language is around support. It's almost like being a combination of a, that process coach and a life coach. Yeah. Because there has to be some compassion. When I was a kid, my dad said to me, you are the most giving person in the world. I think you're going to be a doctor when you grow up. Because I was just that kid who was always looking to ways that I can help people. Maybe that's one of the skills. Maybe that's one of the things you've got to have in your DNA is that you just want to help people. And if you're walking down the road and somebody's struggling, you just go naturally to help them. And that's your natural personality. And that's probably one of the nice fits of a systemologist as well. Because when we see a business struggling because they're not systemized and everything's in the business owner's head. And we have that natural instinct that comes and says, want to help you. That's the starting point. What I have to help you is the knowledge that I have around Systemology, the knowledge I have around tech, the knowledge I have around, you know, the industry, the specific industry you're in, whatever that looks like, whatever your skill set is, now is the time to shine. Because the rest of it is just a process. I'm no different from a bricklayer to a builder to an electrician to a doctor to a bookkeeper to a plumber. They're all different. And they might say they're uniquely different, but what I do with them is exactly the same. Remember we talked about the vanilla coating of everything is that we want to capture the lowest hanging fruit, the minimum viable systems that you have in your business and when they go. But we're different with, we have a thousand things to do. Let's just start with the first piece and the second piece and the third piece. I'm going to help you, guide you through that process. And when they see that I'm taking my time to go through it one step at a time in baby steps, they see that as them. I think they may feel that they're being nurtured properly. We're not just coming in hardballed and going, right, this is the way you're going to do it. I'm going to change everything, I'm going to blah, blah, blah. No, I just come in and just listen. And there's a humble approach to support them through. And as we move along, you then build up the strength, you build in the courage and you build them up to see that they're with their trusted advisor and they're actually getting somewhere. So it is a process.

Yeah, I love it. I think as someone's listening to this now, if they, if they can see something about themselves in what Rob's talking about and you'd be keen to find out if you are a good fit to be a systemologist. We're quite particular and we're growing a network of certified systemologists to help this growing demand of business owners who want to step away from their business, step out of the day to day operations. You definitely head over to systemology.com and from there there's a few links to become a systemologist and more than likely you'll end up hopping on a call to chat with Rob just to make sure it's a good fit. And if it, we'd love to get you on the, the same mission that we're on. And I'm. I'm confident that we can change the face of small business together.

Thanks.