Why You Need To Systemize Your Business

Just so I get a little bit of an idea, who likes systems and processes? Okay, wow, fantastic. I feel like that's a little bit of a theme for this presentation, even the whole event. I saw the last speaker talking about systems. You'll start to realize that systems are everywhere, and the first step is to really become aware that they're there so you can then start to go to work on it. But I think The reason I like talking about systems and processes, it's maybe a little bit different from what a lot of people think. It's not like I enjoy documenting process. I don't like writing out checklists and things like that. That's not my thing. I've fallen in love with what business systems can bring to a business. I've looked into thousands of businesses and I'll see the difference between those that have great systems culture and those that don't, and they're night and day difference. And it's part of the journey to build a profitable enterprise that works without you to get systems and processes in place. There's no avoiding that. So at some point you will need to master this, and I think you kind of already intuitively know that. Just so I get a little bit of a feeling, why are systems and processes important, and why do you need to have them in your business? And I'll just get you to yell out a couple for me. Why would you need systems in your business? You're not creating a wheel every time. You create one process once and repeat it. Perfect. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Any other reasons? Consistent results. Consistent results. Another one. Any other reasons? Free up some time. Yes. Get a desired outcome. Get the desired outcome that you're looking for. Staff onboarding. Help with staff onboarding. Save some time there. Safety. Safety. Yes. There's loads of— reduce errors. Yes, there are loads of different reasons. Save money, increase the value of your business should you want to exit at some point in time, remove that key person dependency so that you can go ahead and take a holiday. Like, there's millions of reasons why you want to get systems and processes in place, and we all agree that they're important. The challenge is they're very rarely urgent. There's so many other things that step in front of that, and that kind of stops us from getting to it. It stays on the to-do list, something that we will get to someday, one day. So the question to ask you is, what's stopping you from having the systems and processes in place to the level that you would like? Give me some reasons. Why haven't you got the systems and processes in place so far? Time. Time. Time. Don't have time. Who's got time to write processes? Another one? Resources. Resources, knowledge, don't know where to start. Yep, some good reasons. Any other reasons why haven't you got the systems to the level that you would like them to be? Perfectionism. Perfectionism, yes, got to get it just right, don't ya? Anything else? Analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis. Lots of different reasons. I want to try and bust a few of the myths and misconceptions around what it takes to build a systems culture. I want to make it a little bit more accessible to you. There's never been a better time to systemize your business than right now with all of the AI and new tools that are coming out. It's infinitely easier to capture what you're currently doing, turn it into process. It used to be worth it back in the day when you had to do it manually and you'd be watching videos and writing out checklists by hand, but now we can save an infinite amount of time by using some of these tools. If it was worth it before, now the investment, the ROI that you get from investing into your systems is off the charts. That's what we're going to talk a little bit about today. Because we're limited on time, I won't jump into my story. We had a little bit of an intro at the start. Many of you attended the conference last year, I believe, got a copy of my book. If you don't, Rob and I at the end have got a couple of copies that we'll be handing out. That tells my story. So I don't need to go into that. Suffice to say that I'm on a mission to free all business owners worldwide from the day-to-day operations. That's kind of something that I've bought into, and now I'm all in on that. And that's all I focus on, just the systems piece, 'cause I know it's important, and I feel like it's one of the least addressed areas in business. But I feel like there's a rise. Business owners are becoming more and more aware of how important it is and moving it into that urgent bucket to go to work on it. Now, I think maybe I have systems in my DNA, I'm not too sure. This is actually the first system that I ever saw. You can see my name just up the top there. You can actually see the year there. It's 1988. This is a system that my dad put together for my brother and I. He was a systems engineer and he thought, I'm gonna gamify life here. And that's my brother there, Chris. And we would earn points over the course of the week that would determine how much pocket money we would get. So I'd get like extra points for cleaning my bedroom, being good to my brother, looking after Mum, cleaning up the bathroom. Look, I could even get— what would I get? On a Friday night, if I went to bed as an 8-year-old before 10 o'clock, I got 5 points, which was pretty awesome. My dad was a bit of a night owl. It's funny, you see someone's personality in a system. This is about 3 pages long and on the last page, there's a scoring legend and he would tally everything up at the end of the week and how much pocket money you got was determined by the points that you scored. So I loved the sheet. I played the sheet. I always got maximum payout. He even had this rule. If you got 3 consecutive weeks over 150 points, you'd get a bonus payout. So I'm milking it for all it's worth. That was me. I liked systems. My brother, on the other hand, Chris, he didn't like systems. He didn't follow the sheet. He didn't get any pocket money. He didn't want to partake. He boycotted the whole system. It taught me a valuable lesson. There are two types of people in this world. There are those that follow systems and there are those that don't. Now, in life and in your family, you don't get to choose your family members. They are who they are. But in business, you get to choose your staff. I'm telling you now, it is infinitely easier to work with systems-driven people they're non-systems-driven people. And once you become aware of this, you build this into your recruitment process and you look for people who will resonate with the systems side of doing business. It's possible, even if you don't see yourself as a systems person, to own a systems-driven business. In fact, it's quite common. A lot of business owners aren't systems people. But what they do is they, the really great ones that scale, they surround themselves with people who are. That's the key. You need to understand that importance. If you don't feel like you're strong in systems, you better make damn well sure you're surrounded by strong systems people to support where you're weak so you can focus on the areas that you're strong at.