David Jenyns - Business Systems That Create Time, Reduce Errors And Scale Profits

I don't think I've ever had a discussion with a business owner where they've gone, systems aren't important. All the business owners go, yes, systems are important. They're just never urgent. And the biggest question I always get is, yeah, but where do I start? Where's the system for systemizing my business? What's the first set of 10 to 15 systems that I start with? It's those types of questions that I really wanted to address.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and float Shark with your boy, my boy Matt wol Joe Fu. Hey, it's that time again.

It's intro, intro, intro time. Yeah.

I wonder if that was the intro that was on this episode. You never know.

I don't know. Yeah. I am only told of our intro and beatboxing because other people tell us about it.

Yeah, we actually forget. Well, there's two things that people seem to come up to us and mention from our podcast. They either go intro, intro, intro or they go wiki wiki.

Uh huh. The boom boom, beatboxing beatbox for.

It'S fun.

Wiki wiki.

Yeah. All right. So yeah, I guess that's our systems though, right? Because we have great systems around the podcast. We never even think about that part of the whole compilation of audio clips, I guess.

Well, anybody who's been listening for a while knows we have two different intros and they're kind of like swapped back and forth. We literally have no idea which intro was on this episode.

So speaking of systems, because that's a system of ours.

It is.

That is the most dialed in system probably in our business is the podcast stuff and release and all that.

No doubt.

Haven't missed a beat. Yeah. We have David from Systemology on the show and basically he is the system's maestro.

Maestro, Maestro. I like how you pronounce that.

He's the master. So David wrote a book called Systemology that is going live in early August or shoot, he mentioned it.

I think it's like the second week of August he mentions it on the episode. We don't need to try to remember right now.

Either way, the way that you get to and go check it out, it's one of their systemology.com book and it's a great book because he's shared it with us. Matt is going to digest that audiobook shortly.

Wait, did we say his name yet? David Jennings.

I said David but I forgot to say Janin's I think.

Okay.

This is David from Systemology. I like Systemology so much. I Feel like that should just be his name. Systemology. System. Yeah, this ology names.

Check it out, man, because that book is good. But this, I mean, he has a very interesting story that we go through that breaks down how systems literally changed his life. But also there's a whole ton of other folks and scenarios that he talks about here. Yeah, in ours.

No, this episode was definitely.

Sort of porn for me because I'm like, that's weird. Yeah, that was probably a bad analogy. No, but I love talking about systems. I love hearing about systems. And this was a whole episode about systems and why you need systems and how to create systems and what's the first system you should like create in your business? When you start a business, what process should you use to create this system so that they're duplicatable and repeatable by future staff members and all of that kind of stuff. We cover the gamut when it comes to systems. And David was very, very, very generous with his time going even a little over. We kept him right up until his next phone call because he was just given some value here and we didn't want to. We didn't want to cut them off. So yeah, let's talk some systems.

Well, systems are cool. So here's the big thing is like if you're not a systems person, I typically don't think that way. Naturally this is for you. It's probably even more for you than if you are naturally inclined with systems and all that stuff. You'll even love this. You'll probably think it's porn. Maybe. I don't know, like. Matt. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I mean, okay, bad analogy. That was a bad analogy.

I'll just say let it go, Matt.

But no, but what I was gonna say is even a systems guy, he's probably going to knock down some beliefs around your beliefs around systems. Because one of the things he talks about is being a systems person. You don't actually need to be the person that creates the systems. And we'll get into that. I'm not going to explain it as well as he can, so I'll let him explain it. But I think whether you do a lot of systems in your business now or you don't, but no, you should. This episode's for you.

Either way. I agree. All right, cool. Well, we took some notes for you. You definitely want them as well as get his book. Obviously they're not replacing at all because his book is Liter, your friggin manual for creating your Systems. Go to hustleandflowchart,.com comp. Hustleandflowchart.com comp. And that was very emphatic on the comp. Good timing there, Matt. Where else can they get these notes?

They can get these notes if they have a rotary cellular dial phone.

Satellite phone.

Satellite phone, yeah. You could text the number 38470, send the word comp to that number, will get you the notes if you do that as well. That way, if you're, you know, out jogging right now. If you're out jogging with your poodle.

How do you jog, Matt?

Like this.

Yeah. No, actually, funny story. The way that Matt jogs is in basketball shoes. The one. The one time we ever jogged together.

That'S all I had available. I don't use those now. I have my new balances.

That's true. But I remember you're like, I got so many blisters. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Basketball shoes.

I'm not a jogger. I'm not a runner. I don't do distance running.

That was, like, one time ever. And it was hilarious.

But, no, I don't use those shoes anymore. That was one time.

One time.

Joe likes to think of stories that happened one time and then hold it against me for the rest of my life.

I'm just saying it's funny. I thought it was a hoot.

It was a hoot.

It was a hoot. All right. So was there another thing before we jump over to this thing?

No. Go get the notes. Hustleandflowchart.com computer. If you're not a member of the Facebook group, go to flowchartgroup.com we like to bring our guests into the group, and.

We let you know when new episodes go live. We post videos, bonus content, all sorts of cool stuff in the group over@flowchartgroup.com so check that out as well.

I think you nailed it, Matt.

I think that's all I want to say.

That's all I want to say. All right, let's go talk with Javid. Javid. David.

Oh, you're way too drunk for this right now.

Oh, I'm totally drunk. All right, David, we're live. How you doing, man?

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you for having me on the show.

Of course. We've been chatting for a while. I know you and I have. And mutual buddy, good buddy of ours, Charlie Valor, sent you our way. And Charlie's always a wealth of amazing people, and you're doing some amazing things.

Well, I can't believe that I've been chatting with you about the Systems. And then about, I don't know, halfway into the emails, you're like, and I'm not even the systems guy, but I love them, though.

That's the weird thing. I'm just not naturally inclined to go systems. But yeah.

Systems are so exciting. That's what I'm trying to bring. I'm trying to bring the love back. And that's why I'm looking forward to this episode. Because you guys are Flowchart. It's built in your name. You love systems and process.

That's really where the name came from. You got Hustle and Flowchart. Flowchart represents this sort of systematic element of your business. And Hustle represents the sort of grind that you got that everybody kind of has to. To go through to get things initially set up. So, I mean, that's. That's really where the name comes from.

And that's the yin and the yang. So we got the Hustle on the left there and the systems guy on the right.

That's right, dude. You get it.

But yeah, I mean, I. So you were absolutely gracious to share your book. I mean, brand new book, Systemology with. Oh, dang. I haven't seen the COVID That looks good.

Is that publicly available yet or when does that come out?

Not yet. So it's August 18, 2020. So depending on when we drop this episode, though, this will be out.

Yeah, this will probably come out about a week or two before that comes out, so.

Perfect.

Yeah. Oh, perfect. I'm most pumped about the audio version because I got the gentleman who wrote the forward. I'm sure we'll get into it. Michael Gerber had read the forward. So I'm super excited to get the audio version out.

Yeah, the audiobooks, I mean. And you read the book as well, which is even cooler. So it's great when the author actually reads the book. I feel like.

Especially when they've got an awesome Australian accent.

That's right. True passion.

I'm biased, but yes, we are too, I guess.

Yeah. So, I mean, I just think it's interesting. The book was amazing. It came timely, like, for us, I feel like at a. At a good time where we're chatting about this pre recording is, you know me, not a systems guy, but very interested in systems. I see the power in them. You have a manual, basically that you've created, but in a fun way. But it's like allowing us to open up for all these different opportunities that are coming our way where if we didn't have proper systems and an organization of our thoughts and efforts, we'd be like, oh, that was a great opportunity. Can't do much with it. So thank you for that.

Yeah. And Joe doesn't give himself enough credit with systems, but anybody who looks at our business from the outside looks at our business and goes, holy shit, you guys have some pretty dialed in systems, but it's all him.

Some of them. I'm a member as well of your community, so I've seen inside some of the systems that you guys do. So you're, you've definitely dialed it in. So that's why I always love getting some of the early feedback I've been getting from the book. Once even if a systems person reads it, they kind of instantly get it and just go, oh, wow, you've, you've simplified. Because I feel like there's so much great work on systems out there. Oftentimes a lot of it deals with big business. You know, we're talking about Six Sigma and Lean and then we think about, you know, maybe the smaller medium sized business. There's a lot of books like the E Myth and Scaling up and Traction Work the System and a lot of them do a great job at selling the idea of systems. I don't think I've ever had a discussion with the business owner where they've gone. Systems aren't important. All the business owners go, yes, systems are important, they're just never urgent. And the biggest question I always get is, yeah, but where do I start? Where's the system for systemizing my business? What's the first set of 10 to 15 systems that I start with? It's those types of questions that I really wanted to address.

Yeah, yeah, well, and you're addressing an issue for a lot of small business owners particularly that are kind of stuck in the work. And you know, it's Michael Gerber was saying the whole, you know, kind of stuck working in the business, not on it. So you basically extracted that concept and like put a manual in place for people to follow.

Well, let's circle back around to like the systems and where to start in just a minute. I do want to, I want to get into your story a little bit because I know you've, you've had a few businesses that you've sold and you know, there was a bit of a journey that led you to where you are today. So let's, let's back up a little bit and talk about your entrepreneurial journey so far. So how did you get into business? And you know, what's the story so far up until today.

The I'll start off with the first story then because you said, how did I get started? So let me take you all the way back. I just read a book. I'd come out of school and I thought, oh, I want to go make money. So I decided not to go to university. I thought, right, I'm just going to hit it and go straight to where the money is. And I thought the money was in the stock market. So I ended up taking out a loan and doing one of those weekend learn how to trade the stock market courses. And then at the end of that I realized, hang on, all I had was a little bit of knowledge now and a $5,000 debt. I'm living with my mum in a two bedroom flat. I wasn't going to be trading myself to riches anytime soon. I needed to. I was working in a supermarket to stack shelves to kind of pay back the loan. So that was a quick reality check. And then I started submerging myself in a lot of self development stuff. I read a book called the One Minute Millionaire and it had a bunch of different stories in it. But one of the stories really stuck out for me. It was about a guy called Paul Hartunian and he sold the Brooklyn Bridge. He was watching the news, they were doing some renovations on the Brooklyn Bridge. And in the background he saw all of this discarded wood. And there was the truck that was doing all the removals of that wood was in shot and it had the phone number. And he had this light bulb moment where he said, oh, I'm going to call these guys, get them to deliver all the wood to me and then I'm going to. He wrote a Press release, New Jersey man sells Brooklyn Bridge for 1995. Sent it out to all of the different media outlets and then basically got hounded for the next 12 months because he took the wood, chopped it into little pieces, stuck it to certificate paper and then basically sold little pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge for 20 bucks. So I just read this book, the One Minute Millionaire. It told that story. And then here I was driving past the mcg, which is, you know, Australia is sporting mad. The MCG is almost. It might as well be like a church. It's a religious icon here in Australia. I'm driving by, yeah, and I see they're doing renovations on one of the stands, the Ponstard stand. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. It was almost like fireworks just went off in my brain. It was just, oh, wow. I can replicate what I just learned here in Australia. So I followed the rabbit hole. I went to the wreckers, got my hands on a bunch of discarded carpet and wood. The MCG had this real iconic green wooden seating that everybody knew. So I got my hands on a bunch of that, got it chopped up into the little pieces, went down to our local office works, which is like an office max, got this fancy.

Certificate paper and stuck a piece of the wood to it, wrote the press release, melbourne man sells the MCG for 2495. And sent it out to some of the different media outlets. And I purchased an ad in one of the. It was like an advertorial because I had a little, you know, I was familiar with, you know, I was doing all that self development motivational stuff and I kind of headed down and got interested in direct mail. So I ended up writing this little advertorial that looked like a news article and ran it in the paper saying, you know, melbourne man sells it for $24.95 as well. And then I got the similar sort of mobbing. I got on local radio, on tv.

I even got onto this website. It's kind of like one of those group buying sites. It's called wishlist.com and when they ran the ad for buying these little certificate paper, because back in the day, the orders would come through the fax. My fax ran literally nonstop for 48 hours, order after order after order after order. And here I am in my mum's two bedroom flat, like with mum's help, and ended up getting some of the family to help. But we just, we had this little certificate paper, sticking it down, folding it out and posting it out. And then I had the upsell. The upsell I was going to ask.

I'm like, yeah, the upsell was I.

Had these because I had the carpet that I got hold of. So I made these magnificent frames with the MCC crested logo on it, which is the Melbourne Cricket Club. And they were the upsell for about 800 bucks. So all in all, that was my first foray into business. It wasn't really a business, it was kind of more like an opportunity. But I definitely milked that opportunity.

Dang. So that opened your eyes. Was that really the aha moment to entrepreneurship then? And like, okay, there's something here.

I knew I always wanted to be in business and work for myself. I did think it was going to be in the stock market and I did go pretty deep down that path. But then business really started to sort of call me because I feel like I have so much more control over Business like business is the vehicle where I can directly put my efforts and I'm rewarded for those results. Whereas in the stock market you still kind of playing bets and placing bets on other people's businesses and you can't directly impact the price. So business always kind of drew me in.

Yeah, and that's kind of always been. Our philosophy too is like with investing, we would rather invest in ourselves first, in our business or businesses that we can become partners and you know, we're somehow going to get compensated for those efforts, that investment of our time or energy or marketing into it. And yeah, I like that take on business. And I know in. I think you had a sporting goods store as well, is that right?

I know it feels funny when I talk about some of the different businesses I was involved in because they're so disparate, but I think it's good to talk about this one because your audience, particularly in the States, will know of this one. So we wanted to make the Australian version of Hot Topic, because over here we didn't really have that here. So my business partner is. When I was working in that supermarket that I was telling you about, it was really strange. The people that you kind of meet on your journey. I was helping a guy shelf stack in that supermarket who owned a clothing store about two suburbs away who was working in the supermarket to pay the wages of the person who worked in the store because he never wanted to work in the store, because his plan was to never work in the store. It he only wanted to work on it. So I'm working next to this guy stacking shelves in a supermarket as he's paying for some other guy to sell the rock and roll clothing out of. It was called Stars and Stripes at the time. And he said, oh, you know, he heard what I did with the MCG and he said, oh, you know, maybe you'd like to help out here. He kind of spotted me as this young sort of go getter who wanted to give anything a try. So of course I said, yeah, let's do it. And we worked on that store. Initially it was outside of a shopping center, but like Hot Topic, the next one we tried, we opened it in a shopping center. We wanted to be for those Australian listeners because you're going to get a lot of Australian listeners when we start sharing this around, but they'll be familiar with a store called off you Tree, which is kind of like Hot Topic, but with a whole bunch of bong paraphernalia and drug related T shirts and expletives. All over it. So we wanted to be the parent friendly version of that that lives in a shopping center. And we, we ended up getting that up to three stores. The third store we franchised. So that's partly also where the love of systems, like the love of systems has always been throughout. Like it started in the stock market days, it kind of reemerged itself in planet 13 days. That's what the business evolved to. But we were selling, you know, like if you don't know Hot Topic, it's kind of like AC DC and Metallica.

All the way to Pokemon and like weird tchotchkes.

I remember a lot of like gothic and like punk kind of clothing and stuff like that.

Yeah, that was always the pants.

They're called Trip. We used to import these ones from the States actually. You guys are on the west coast, aren't you?

San Diego?

Yeah. So there's a brand actually, no, maybe they're on the east coast. But it was Trip, actually. Must have been NYC Trip. But they made these those gothic pants that you're talking about with all the chains come off them and the studs and the spikes we used to import those in because no one was distributing them here in Australia and they used to sell incredibly well. But the rag trade is, it's got to be one of the hardest businesses that you can get into. It's just there are these fashions and trends and you've got to be cool and you've got to be able to, you know, every month you're so far behind the eight ball every month with wages, with rent, like it's an extremely challenging vehicle compared to a lot of what we're all involved in now. Like online business just, it's just a far superior vehicle.

Yeah, I mean that's so Systems. Obviously with lice, our franchising had to come into play. I think that was in the book, I believe, a story of you forcing yourself into systems. Right. Like that was the whole beginning of this thinking.

That's actually like one of the things that made me recognize how valuable systems are. Like there are a bunch of reasons that people systemize.

Actually when you guys think about systems, why do you think systems are important? Because you're already sold on the idea of systems. If you were going to say to someone else, why are they important? What are some of the things that come to mind?

For me as a guy that doesn't naturally incline into systems think like Systems is to free my brain of just switching costs. I think you and I chatted about this before but the mental load of a task and then freeing that mental load. But obviously time comes with that as well. So I'm constantly trying to basically free mental space and time out of my days.

Yeah, I mean, when I think of systems, I think of it in two different senses. Right. I think of it in the sense of I want to be able to back myself out of any sort of monotonous tasks that need to happen. But also I think of systems in the sense of I don't want stuff to slip through the cracks, so I need to make systems so that stuff that I feel is important doesn't get forgotten. Right. So there's really two things. Back myself out. But also I don't want to. I don't want stuff to get missed. So systems are required to make sure important elements don't get missed.

I can't wait for you to read the book because you've got all the stuff there already. Like that. That's a big one. It's like that whole idea of getting all of the stuff that needs to be done taken care of so you don't have to think of it. So your brain then has the space to think about the really good things, the huge opportunities, because you don't need to worry about the small stuff, but one of the other ones. And there's loads of benefits that happen. But from the Planet 13 perspective, it was to create an asset that's saleable, like Planet 13. Introducing systems and processes. We all know this. A lot of this stuff, you're going to be nodding your head because you've heard it before. But it's that idea that if you were going to try and sell your business, the first thing that the person who's going to buy it wants to see is they want to make sure that they can de risk that investment opportunity and think, how can I be sure that this business will continue to operate when the key people have left the business, Whether that's the business owner. And systems really is the only way to do that. So by systemizing a business, you significantly increase its value on that exit and it gives you options. I think that's really what it's about in business is increasing the options that you've got. Because then as a business owner, you'll see all of these options. Some options you can take advantage of and some you can't. But by increasing the options, you then give yourself the chance to make the best choice or the optimal result. So I feel like systems gives you the opportunity to go for the best opportunity and something Might pop into your lap. It's unexpected. Things might change. Like, you never know what's going to be down the road. But systems at least then gives you a space to move and pivot and things like that. And I mean systems. If I was to reel it off, it makes your business more efficient. That gives a better experience for your customers. Those customers then end up coming back and having repeat business with you. They'll refer more people.

That efficiency is obviously going to make that business more profitable.

You reduce a lot of the errors that go on in business. Sometimes it's very hard for me to quantify. That was an early question that I got, which I got challenged with, is what are the benefits from systemizing? And for a long time there, I had trouble just giving the bottom line figure. Like I really wanted to just say to someone, tell me a little bit about your business. Give me some of the numbers. How many leads have you got? How many sales are you making? What product are you selling? What margin are you working on? How much does the customer repeat? Oh, great. Well, based on that calculation, I can tell you that you're leaving $650,000 on the table by not systemizing. Because if you get 10% wins in each of those different departments, when we multiply it out, that's going to be the change. And I talk about that towards the end of the book because that's the best way that I've come up with to figure out what is the bottom line. But then there's all the stuff that you just can't quantify, like those opportunities that you can take advantage of now that you couldn't have taken advantage of because you were stuck in the business. Systems give the business owner the freedom, and it's a little bit choked up there.

Systems also make you cry.

That's the bit I can't quantify because there's a serendipity that can happen all the time. I know that's one of the biggest stories in the book. And it opens with the Michael Gerber story. And I couldn't have done that without having systemized the agency beforehand.

And that's the. Yeah, and that's a very interesting story. And maybe that could be an open loop for folks to go grab the book, too, because it's.

Wait, you're not gonna tell the Michael Gerber story? That was the one story you said you wanted him to tell.

One sec, one sec. But the opportunity thing, because I completely know what you mean, and it's very difficult to describe systems or the importance of Systems. Once a business reaches a certain amount of momentum or demand or whatever it is, sales, customers, leads, there's just other pressures. There are new pressures are on the person in the middle of all that. You don't want to be in the middle of everything. Obviously you're going to have to get out of there because there's the obvious pressures, but then there's these internal anxieties that I know I felt and feel when something. There's an open loop. We're actually just talking about this on a project that we're partnered up with where we don't have the full control over. And there's not good systems right now. And we're just like shit. There's just like. There's a lot of stuff we got to handle and most of this stuff, like we're waiting on this. Like someone needs to freaking clear this up and like just for our peace of mind, you know. I want to feel good by like delivering a really good product but not freaking out the process. So like it's just. I feel like systems deliver a good.

Life guy because you. I always find the hustle guy oftentimes the dreamer wants to move things quickly. It's that the visionary as well at times.

They want the benefit of the systems. They just don't want to have to do the work of creating correct. That's why you need a bat 100%.

And that's why I'm laughing because you nailed it so hard right there.

And that's why I think this book appeals really well to non systems folks. Because I mean come Systems Ology is a really cool book title by the way. But at the same time I'm not inclined to make that my first thing to go to as a more hustle guy until I reach a point where I'm like mental overload is just like. Yeah. Well it's funny systems in my life.

Because in our business when we're deciding whether or not to pursue like a new project or opportunity that comes our way. One of my criteria when looking at the projects is can we systematize that? Because I don't want to add more shit to my plate. So is this systematizable?

Right? Yeah.

And that I have this thing where I'll say if the business can't work without you or really without any specific person, the business is broken. That's one of the filters I look at every business or thing that I work on is can it work without key person dependency? If it's going to have key person dependency, that's not a business I want to be involved in because very quickly you'll tap out and there's just not scale there because you're only limited by that key person dependency. So that's a big one.

Well, let's tie that into the Gerber story really quick because it does kick off your whole journey. But key person dependency sounded like what you were in with your marketing, your agency at the time, that you're like, ah, crap.

I can't really coming back to the whole storyline. So you had the sport business, you had the clothing business. I know you had an SEO business of some sort along there too. Right.

He's the linear guy. So he knows.

Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, I want to get back to our timeline here. So I know, I know where everything's going. So the Gerber story, does it kind of tie back into like the SEO business and then how you transitioned into System Hub?

Yeah. So the.

I off the back of that stock market stuff, and I'm going to give you the full linear story here. It's like I'll kind of jump around. The timeline's all there. It feels a little bit like watching one of those movies like Memento, where the order is completely out, but the storyline's kind of there.

It's funny you say that because last night this is a little random tangent, but I watched a Jim Jeffries stand up comedy on Netflix and Jim Jeffries is hilarious. But his most recent standup, which came out yesterday as of recording, which is July 7, he basically tells one story throughout the entire standup that would normally take somebody probably seven minutes to tell. And I won't tell you what the story is. It's sort of disturbing. But he tells like basically a story that would take about seven minutes to tell. But then he goes off on all of these tangents, and he goes so far off on these tangents that by the time he comes back to the initial story that he was telling, you forgot that he was telling his story. And you just have to laugh at the fact that he came back around to that story. Did you watch that already?

No, but I like it. I like the sound of it.

Because there'll be a linear story and there is a linear story here. So after the stock market stuff, one of the things, another side business that I'd set up was I thought, well, I've got all this knowledge about stock market stuff, so I want to to leverage that. So I partnered up with another guy and we wrote a study guide on how to use A particular charting package called metastock, because I knew how to do that at least. So we brought out a product called the metastock programming study Guide. And then I learned marketing. That's how I got all into my marketing and SEO because I wanted to make sure that we could spread the word out on that. So we ran these little workshops and I was chopping it up into little pieces and then uploading it to YouTube. I mean this was early days of YouTube had just launched and SEO is taking off very early to the market. And then there were some changes in Australian financial law. They said you can't give general advice and I know you're listening to an audio so you won't see me do the inverted commas, but general advice. Now what the heck is general advice? That's anything. If ever they wanted to shut you down for talking about anything to do with the stock market, they could just say, well, you're not licensed and you're giving general advice. And I didn't want to build a business where we might be in a situation where someone could be knocking on our doors and just shut us down like that. And we didn't want to get licensed because it was my business partner at the time was just like, I don't want to jump through all of those hoops. So I built up that side business and a good team around it. We had, you know, I got interested in offshoring really early. So we were working, got some team members working out of a BPO in the Philippines and then I had some local staff as well because we were building up this reasonable sized stock market, education, business marketing info, products and stuff online. And then we decided, hey, my business partner doesn't want to do it. So here I am with this team that have been operating in a hyper competitive niche because stock market trading like we were crushing it early days because SEO was just, you know, an absolute beast back then. You just choose a keyword, put it in your title, tag your description, send a few spammy links to it, and Bob's your uncle, your number one for trading system. So.

I had this team off the back of that and I thought, oh, okay, well maybe we could start, take that whole marketing team and then apply it for local businesses. So I'm based here in Melbourne, Australia. So we set up Melbourne SEO Services because I thought, yes, let's get the keyword into that and make sure that I can quickly rank for it. And that business then took off. And that's the business where I got stuck in it for about 10 years because for some reason I had all this baggage around systems where I thought, this business is different, it's online, it's always constantly changing. How can I write a system for something when Google's going to change its algorithm next week and it's going to very quickly be out of date? And I thought.

I was the centerpiece in that business because I understood SEO. Everything came through me. I was in the marketing videos. So when the clients would watch a video and then they pick up the phone and they'd call us, they want to chat with me. And I wasn't sure that at that time I could get my team to follow systems. I thought even if I documented those systems, then the team wouldn't follow them. And we were creating content and I didn't want to have. I had this other baggage. I was thinking systems remove creativity, I thought, and I don't want to remove the creativity from the content creation. So it's just carrying around all of this rubbish in my head around business systemization. That meant I never systemized that business yet. I'd done it in all of my previous businesses. But I just got stuck in that space and that's where I then I got stuck in Melbourne SEO for about 10 years until I had a turning point for me and we found out we were pregnant. And I know, Joe, you've just had kids as well, so you know that time is a really interesting time for change. It's a fantastic time to be the catalyst if you want to use it that way for change. And I did. I said, I don't want to, to be the dad who's always too busy. I don't want to be the dad who's working the 70 hour work weeks. I want to be more actively involved. I want to have at least the choice to work decide when I want to work in it or on it. And so I went on that journey of systemization and I went deep. I read everything that I could. And the long story short, I ended up hiring a CEO, Melissa, who came in and ran that business. We systemized it, got up to a point. She ran that business for three years and she was. I pretty much stepped out at that point. Took some time off, we had some of the kids. It got to a point where, yeah, the business was just consistently generating profit for me every quarter. I had to break a lot of those myths and reattest some assumptions, like I'd reached all of these faulty conclusions. And then I thought that's the way it was. I use that analogy in the book, because I see a lot of business owners do it where. And I talk about the elephant who is stuck in the ground by this little stake. Because when they were young, they had the stake in the elephant, tried to pull its leg away, and then it just learned this helplessness of I can't do anything. And now that it's, you know, however many tons and could rip out this little stake like that, they just don't because it's learned. Well, there's no point in pulling on that stake because it doesn't work. And I feel like business owners have oftentimes reached that conclusion for systems. They've tried to systemize and it didn't work. They know systems are important, but I'm not a systems guy. Or like I said, it removes creativity or it's too time consuming or they think the business owner is going to have to be the one that does it. There's all of this stuff and they've tugged at it once or twice and they've forgotten about it and they've now said, I'm not a systems person. And I retested all of those assumptions and that's what helped me step out, hire a CEO, and then just completely changed my view on business.

That's interesting, because we all have different reasons why systems. If we don't feel like systems are important right now or the urgent thing to focus on, there's these catalysts that exist out there. And you mentioned kids. Like exactly what you just said. Me having my kid. I didn't want to be stuck in work all the time. I actually wanted to figure out how to work less so I could be there for her. I mean, I've been waiting for so long to have her. It's like, come on, I have the power of this. So what are some other. And I want to get to the Gerber story, because I know that's coming in this linear fashion here. But what are some common catalysts for people to start getting in this mindset, even if they are a systems person? I mean, still, there's an urgency factor. It's not like Matt's just going to happily go create all the systems that he needs right now. I mean, sometimes you are because you're weird like that.

But no, I mean, normally our process is like, figure out how to do something without systematizing it. Just like throw shit at the wall, find out what works and then the stuff that works. Then you go systematize that.

So, like, what is the catalyst?

You've got the both brain, which is Very unique where you can test and move quickly, but then you also appreciate the systems. And that's speaking to you, Matt there. That's actually a unique combination. Usually you've got the big picture person quick moving. Actually, have you guys ever read the book Rocket F. Gino Wickman? Yeah. The visionary and the Integrator. You've actually got traits of both similar to me. And I think that I appreciate the value of systems. And I know we'll get to the Gerber story, but the one thing I found really unique when I was working with him is he is not. He is the systems guy. He wrote the book called the E Myth. Everybody knows the E Myth. It's funny, they know the E Myth more than they know his name. But he systems guy in that when I was working with him, he doesn't like the detail, he doesn't write the process. I always had it in my head that he was the systems guy. And now that I've done some work with him, I realize he's not. He's a creative visionary who's recognized the importance of systems and then plugs in the team behind him to deliver that piece. That for me was aha. Because then I went, I don't have to be the guy. I don't have to. I can love the result of systems, but I don't get excited by, you know, writing out bullet points and sub bullet points and you know, figuring out what that order will look like. And like that doesn't get me excited. But the result of the systems is what does. Yeah, I didn't answer your question.

The catalyst of why people might do it. There's a story, there's a lady. There's lots of different reasons. A common one is actually exiting. So I had this lady, her name's Jeanette, she runs a company called, called Diggy Doggy Daycare. It's a doggy daycare center. So you, you know, people go to work, they drive to this place, they leave their dog there and they walk them, they groom them, they've got little cameras everywhere and you can check in on your phone to see how your pooch is doing. And she'd been in that business for about 11 years before she decided that she wanted to exit. She started working with us. It was over a two year period where she heavily systemized and applied the same systemology method. And towards the end when she was looking for the person who was acquiring, she already had some relationships. But the person who bought the business was a national company here in Australia and they bought the business. And they cited two reasons and why they paid such a high multiple. She got a really high multiple on profits on exit. And they said, financial performance, you've already proven the model to work and your systems, because we want to roll this out nationwide and you've effectively given us the prototype, the franchise prototype that can then be cookie cutter. And you've given it us all the systems. And she knew that intuitively two years earlier when she said I want to exit, she thought, well, because she came from a financial background, she said, I know they're going to value the systems, so I need to go to work on that now. I need to get it to a point where it's working without me. So exiting is one of the reasons. But it also depends on the life cycle and where you're at. Because some people want to work more, some people want to work less. I remember reading the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and everybody thinks that he works four hours. He doesn't. The whole premise of that book is to work efficiently, you need to get the work that would take you 40 hours done in four hours. And now what does that mean that gives you all that other time now some people will tip that back straight into business and become infinitely more productive. Some people might decide to have some time off. Like it's the freedom to choose. Do you want to put more energy in? Do you want to take more energy out? Most business owners just don't get the choice, which is sad because they start a business to get choice and they're looking for the freedom. But then they get locked in and they've got anything but the freedom that they were searching for.

And that's interesting because we all create our. We should be able to create our systems and how we structure our days as business owners. I mean, on or offline, you kind of can, you have the ability, you can hire people. Even if you don't want to open the store early in the morning, if you're offline, you don't have to be there then. But it's up to us to break these constructs that we feel like we have to just fill in our weeks. I know for us sometimes it's like okay, nine to five, it's like, wait, hold on line. That's all just some made up factory thing from long ago. And systems will allow us to. Actually, no, let's just do the important stuff in a condensed piece of time, maybe a couple times a week or whatever. And then you have this thinking time and you can go creative Time. And that's where systems, I feel like, can make you more creative with those constraints and those systems.

I feel like that what you're talking about is the biggest benefit that I've got from systemizing the business. So I got stuck in the agency, we systemized it, hired the CEO, I stepped out. And then I literally, not more than a month after I'd sort of stepped out, I get this email in my inbox saying, call me. And the name was from Luz Delia Gerber. Now, I had no idea who Luz Delia Gerber was, but I knew the surname Gerber. And, you know, we talked about the E Myth. And as far as business systems are concerned, he's the Oprah of that industry. He's the Godfather, original thinker there. And I got this message, so I pick up the phone and call her. And I said, oh, you know, I'm calling up from Australia. And she goes, oh, yes, I know. I've just been watching a video of yours. And I just. I saw it and I just dared to email you and say, call me. I have to speak to you. I want to speak to you now. And here I was. And in the book, I've actually got the transcript of the story, because the Gerbers, they record everything regardless of the phone call. So I've got a recording, a copy of that actual recording written down in the book. And she said, oh, look, have you heard of Michael Gerber? And I was like, yes. So I was kind of a little bit starstruck. And she said, well, he's just turned 80. He's written the final book in his E Myth series called the beyond the E Myth. And I happened to see a book launch that you did for your book. My first book, Authority content that I wrote. She watched me launch that book and she said, I saw what you did for your book launch. I don't know how I came across it. I just followed the rabbit hole, ended up watching some videos on YouTube, ended up on your list. I loved what you did. I'd love for you to launch Michael Gerber's last book, the beyond the E. Myth, because for the first time, we've decided to self publish rather than go through HarperCollins like all of the previous books. We want to maintain the rights. You know, Michael's starting to think about legacy. He's thinking about, you know, maintaining and control all of the content as best as he can. So when he packages it up, he thinks about, you know, what will happen in the future with his work. And so she said, I'd love for you to launch his book because we're going to do this. And she goes, for whatever reason, I just think you're the guy. And I'm like, yeah, I'm on the other side of the world and you've just randomly appeared on my doorstep. And she said, the book launches in three months and I need you to work on it pretty much full time. It's probably going to be, you know, like take up just more than full time. It's probably going to be weekends, evenings. She goes, it's an absolute truckload of work. We know we've kind of left it to the last minute, but we have to launch on this day. Is that something that you can do? And I said, I'd love to do it and I'll volunteer, I'll do it for free because I just want the opportunity to work with Michael and go deep and build that relationship. So that's what I did. I worked on it for three months solid.

Towards the end of the project, she invited myself and a few of my friends. I called in a few favors here and there to kind of help speed things along. It was an awesome project to work on. I've never seen doors open quicker than just having to say, oh yes, Michael Gerber. I have people falling over themselves to get him on the podcast to do write ups and reviews and all that sort of stuff. And Michael connected me with a bunch of different people. And then at the end of that three months, three friends, we hopped on a plane, flew to Carlsbad, California, we launched the book and it became an Amazon bestseller in 24 hours, which was the first book that had ever done that for him. He usually would release a book very soft and it was slow and you know, old traditional publishing, they're pretty rubbish at launching books often. And so we hit that and then straight after that we timed it all perfectly because Michael was running one of the last events he was live events he was running called the Dreaming Room, which is an event he runs in one of these fancy swanky hotels. And you kind of go deep to uncover your dream, you, your vision, your purpose and your mission. And so we were over there and then we got to spend time as the book launched, attended the event. And then at the end of the event.

Michael ran a two day mastermind where he was talking about the future legacy of his work and what they were doing. And it was in his little presidential suite at this swanky hotel and they were trying to, to get some really big names to come. There's some really heavy hitters in the room. They wanted to get Tony Robbins to facilitate the room, but for whatever reason, they couldn't get a facilitator. So I stuck my hand up and I said, I'll facilitate the mastermind for two days. And they said, okay, cool. So here I am, not knowing Michael Gerber, like, four months earlier. I had no contact with him at all. I launched his book, flew to the states, facilitated the mastermind group for his future legacy. And that was. Talk about a serendipitous event, a random thing that fell in my lap that I think a lot of business owners, even if they had the Oprah of their industry, knock on the door and say, I would love for you to work on this dream project. A lot of people couldn't take that opportunity. I'm too busy. I'm stuck in the business. How am I going to leave anything? Or everything's just me. And I, by whatever random stroke of good fortune or I don't know if this is the universe kind of bringing everything together for me. But it really felt like I'd systemized it, hired Melissa. She was running the business. Literally, a month later, I get that message. She was running. And that, for me, was the true test of the business to see could she operate it completely without me, off the grid. Like, I didn't get involved in that three months, months. And then I was able to follow that opportunity, which has now opened up so many doors, introduced me to so many, you know, influential people and new ideas. And I learned so much working with Michael. But one of the biggest ones I learned and I internalized is the importance of systems for allowing you to take advantage of opportunities. So that. There we go. Big breath. That was the Gerber story.

That was. That's. Shoot. I mean, that just. And there's numerous of those things that have popped up in our laps, not with Gerber, but with very, very influential people. Cool projects, great opportunities. In the past, we've had to kind of let them sail by, unfortunately. Or, you know, like, oh, we'll refer you to someone else, because we can't honestly take it on. And it hurts.

Some of them you don't even notice. You won't even see them. You'll be so busy working in the business. So there's the ones that you've seen and you've gone nuts. We missed that. But then there are thousands of opportunities that you just didn't see because your head was down and you're focusing on working in it. So that's the big Thing that systems bring is an opportunity to step out. And I didn't get it. Like, I got it intellectually, but now I get it much deeper than that. That whole working in versus on, and you actually jump between the two. There are times that you work in your business, you've got a hustle at the start to get the business up to a certain level. Level. But what happens is people learn bad habits and they get stuck in the hustle. And I stayed in that hustle for 10 years. And it wasn't until I had the catalyst to go, no, I need a break out of this. And then that's what shifted it. Some people, yeah, I'm not sure what causes that catalyst. I mean, if you guys figure it out, that's what I want to deliver on the silver platter for my clients to kind of go, this is how you change.

Well, maybe it's almost like, because I feel like it's different for every single person. It's a personality, it's a system. It's like a partner lives life cycle. Maybe it's like an assessment that you can create on systemology. It's like, hey, where are you? And then you can select these things. And I like that.

Yeah.

I mean, it's an idea to at least like, hey, relate. Like, here's how it can actually help your situation. And like, you know, look at all the other things you can now do with this freed up time. You just saved potentially 20 hours a week.

I think, I think a lot of entrepreneurs too, they get, they get stuck in this thinking that, like, nobody's going to do this better than me. Nobody, you know, nobody knows my business as well as me. Nobody is as passionate about my business as me. Nobody is going to, you know, do as good of a job because nobody has as much on the line in this business as me. Right. And I think there's that. That kind of thinking that it's really hard to break people out of. If you get like really good at Facebook ads early on and you have a system that works for you, you think nobody's going to be able to jump in and do those Facebook ads better than you. Or if you get really good at copywriting early on and you just always do that in your business, you think that nobody's going to be better at copywriting than me because nobody knows my business as well as me. And I think that's sort of the thinking that we need to help people break out of. And that's been tough for me.

Right.

I've sort of Reshifted my thinking. I say this to Joe, like, all the time is like, there's stuff that I love doing in the business. I like doing Facebook ads. I like building landing pa. I like writing copy. I like doing all of this stuff. But I want the option to do it, but not the obligation of doing it. I want to do it when I want to do it, but if I don't feel like doing it, I want to know there's a system in place so that it still happens.

Let's crush that belief now. Like that. That is a myth as I see it, because again, I learned so many things working with Michael. One of the things that I learned was him not being the systems guy effectively, because part of their business, they have the E Myth version. So they have E Myth for accountants, E Myth for lawyers, E Myth for real estate agents. And when it comes to launching those book, they never really had a system in place for launching the book. So I didn't realize this at the time, but Michael effectively got a consultant, me to come in, show them how to book launch. They got me to systemize it as I'm doing it, and then they took those systems, internalized it, and then now whenever they're working with the book verticals, when they, as they launch the verticals, they have a system that they can deploy. So there have been a few times when these recurring ideas pop up into my head, I thought, oh, that's interesting. It takes me back to another. I've got a good friend of mine, Nick Thakra Lal, who is just like, wicked smart in business. And he told me, because when I was struggling to get out of the agency because I couldn't create the systems, he said, why don't you just hire a consultant to come in, create the systems for you, and then get your team to follow them? My first objection was, yeah, why do I want to pay some random person who doesn't really know my business to come in and try and make these systems and processes and then try and get my team to follow them. And so. But I didn't let go of the idea that maybe I didn't need to be the one that creates the system or the process. And I held onto that. And then it got got reinforced by thinking about the work I was doing with Michael. And then I started a podcast, the Business Processes Simplified Podcast, where I would think about problems in my business. I would find the person who's already solved it. My podcast isn't about. It's not an interview. I don't talk about Backstory and history. I say, here's a problem, how do you solve it? Give me the step by step on how you solve it. Then I take that episode, I give it to my team, they document it and turn it into a process. I built up the process. Business Processes Simplified Podcast is all about just taking problems, getting someone else to create the system and then using my team to then document them. And I see, like business, I'm just building up a collection of systems that solve problems. So when I'm, no matter what business I work in, I can take these same systems because systems are actually very similar. In all of the businesses that I've worked with, the biggest amount of difference always seems to be in the operations. It's just the delivery of the product or service. But sales and marketing and HR and management and finance, all of those systems are very transferable from one business to the next. So when we, I set up that podcast and then a few things happened in my brain at that point in time. It's funny how these little things kind of start off, off my brain just kind of thinking down a different path. But I realized the business owner and one of my other thinking is the business owner is typically the worst person in the business to be creating the systems and the process because they're busy, they're never going to get around to it, they see it as important. So you've got to think of systems creation as a two person job. You have the person with the knowledge and then you have the person who does the documentation. And everybody loves to edit. No one likes to work from a blank page. So if you get the knowledgeable worker to do it, record themselves doing it, then you get the documenter who watches it and then they send the draft back to the knowledgeable worker and the knowledgeable worker will find time to edit it. I've done this in countless industries now where you would just think you can't document that or get the business to want to document that. I remember one business was called Portavac and the company owner, Dave, what they do is they clean roofing gutters, both commercially and domestic here in Australia. And he wanted to systemize the business but they couldn't find time. So we identified a systems champion inside their business. Kane, his name was, he was this young 20 year old go getter who just wanted to learn and was hungry, hungry for it and very curious. And we taught him the method of systemology and he would go out into the field, he wear a GoPro and he'd go out into the field. And he would follow around the tradesperson for the day. The way that they set up the equipment, what did they say to the clients, how did they process the order? And he would just record it on a GoPro. Then the videos would come back. We'd get a separate person then to document it, and then it would go back to the original tradesperson just to have a little bit of a look over. And we'd kind of trim together the video, and then they'd have the documentation. But that idea that the business owner needs to be heavily involved in this process, sometimes, especially if you've got a small team about you, it's just about identifying who can do it the best and capture that. Don't try and make your systems perfect out of the gate. Just get. If you figure out who is the best at doing this and then you get that documented and raise everybody up to that level. Level. That's infinitely better than trying to leave it to the business owner to get the perfect system just right that they never, ever get around to. I talk about that in the final chapter, actually, of systemology. I say, don't systemize like McDonald's. For some reason, everybody thinks that McDonald's is the poster child, and they want to systemize like McDonald's. But McDonald's has been systemizing for 60 years. And who are you to come out like, think of McDonald's like an Olympic athlete who's been training. And they're lean and they're mean and they're a systemized machine. And you come out this flabby couch potato who wants to try and run 100 meters next to them and systemize and run like that. No, you need to systemize like McDonald's was 60 years ago. Where did they get started? Watch the Founder, the movie. There you go. I've given you some homework.

That's a good one.

Yeah. You'll see. See, the first time generation of what they created, their systems, it was clunky. They were moving around where the stands were going to be and thinking about, you know, should the milkshake be right near the. You know, the thick shake machine be right near the checkout window? And they move things around because it's not perfect. You kind of just. Just get something up and good enough and take the business owner out of the equation and you'll move infinitely quicker.

Mm, yeah. It's such. It's so hard. It's the ego when needing to be in the middle of everything. It's like, I'm the best, but you're right. No, it's 100%. Because I feel like as a business owner, whoever owns that process, if they're the one to finalize the pro, create it, edit it, all that stuff, it has to be perfect or it has to be like, custom to them. But it's like, yeah, if you get out outside of that person, have them do that process. I love that process, by the way. It's similar to one I think James Schramko talked about, where you can use loom and, you know, have the other team do the recording screen share of their process if it's that kind of work, and then send it to someone else for all the notes. It's like, there's no ego now in this at all. You're kind of taking the tasks in multiple hands, multiple eyes, and essentially it's a playbook after that, you want to.

The whole game of business is about letting your team members do what it is that they do best. And that goes for the business owner. That goes for every team member. So, yes, you could rule with an iron fist and go to your best staff and say, you need to document your systems and if you don't, you're going to be fired. I mean, that's one thing that you could do, but that's a horrible way to do it. Think that even your best team members, they're busy as well, like you. So you want to make the process easy for them. If they don't like doing the detailed documentation, don't force them to do it. And same with the business owner. If that's not you, that's okay. But you want to find the yin to your Yang. So when I think about why you guys make such a great combination, we touched on it right at the start, is you complement each other, each other. You got the hustle and you've got the system side of things. And I found my. The yin to my Yang, which was my Melissa, and it got to a point where I kind of put her in charge and I had to let go and let her do her thing and let go of my ego that there's a point. And it was rather embarrassing. So I don't know if I want to talk about it. Well, I talk about it in the.

Book, so it's okay. It's already out there.

Then.

Melissa. So I'm the business owner and Melissa is the CEO. And I have a habit of whenever I'm working on a project, I think it's the most important. So I'll lean on a team member and say, oh, Look, I'm doing this thing next week and. And I need to get a graphic done, and I need you to do it in the next 48 hours, because I have to meet this deadline and I've left it to the last minute, and I would just lean on as the business owner. I mean, that's my right. I get to throw my weight around. And I did that enough times where Melissa kind of pulled me aside and she said, look, you're doing that and you're throwing out the workflow. You're putting work in that's moving deadlines out for clients. You're. You're just not going about it the right way. Work needs to get channeled through. It needs to get put into Asana. It needs to get delegated and given to the right team member. So if you're going to come in and try and work with the team, I need you to work through our framework. I said, yeah, yeah, fine, fine. I waited, you know, probably a month, and then I've already started breaking the rules again. I'm sending messages directly to the team members. I'm saying, oh, look, I've got to get this audio edited and this video done. Can you do it by tomorrow? And then she wrote a message that she put in Asana for everybody, and she tagged me, she tagged the whole team. And then she posted it in Slack to say, everybody, I need you to read this. It basically said, when Dave comes to you with an urgent task that must be done in the next 48 hours, ignore him. I do not want you to respond to the message. That is not appropriate for the way things are done. And initially, from an ego perspective, hang on. This is my business. Who are you to come in and tell me that my staff shouldn't listen to me? Then I kind of just bit my lip a little bit because she was right. What I was doing is I was undermining her work, her process, the structure she had put in. And she said, look, if you've got a way of doing things, that's okay. When you're off working with your executive assistant, if you've got my ea, she'll work with me. And if I want to move quickly and not follow rules and message her directly, that's okay. But if I'm going to come into, effectively, the house of the business, she wants me to take my shoes off at the front door and not trample mud through everything and knock things over like some obnoxious guest. I need to walk into the house and be respectful that, yes, there are rules. There's a way of doing things, things and I need to follow that process. And she was right. So I started taking my shoes off and she actually told me, she said.

I break staff. She said anyone who works with you directly, Dave, your ea. Because we've tried it a few times where we'll recruit someone, they'll work with me and then we'll try and bring them into the house. But I've taught them all the bad habits.

Well, that's the problem. You're conditioning them almost like a parent with a bad habit. They're passing it to their kids.

Yeah, yeah.

It's tough to break habits.

Now there's a little bit of a joke in the business that if someone works as closely with me that they, they can't work with the rest of the team now.

Well, good for her. She sounds amazing and like the perfect partner. Yeah. For you. And, and it's allowing you. So talk really quick about, I mean systems. Systems ologies to wrap that, wrap this up. And then I know you have system hub as well. Well.

Yes.

We haven't touched on.

Oh yeah, no, I had like three more rabbit holes I wanted to try to go down.

We'll go for it.

So when it. Well, how are you looking on time first of all? Because I know we're kind of getting, we're getting towards the end of where we'd normally start to wrap up.

So look, I'm happy to be guided by you guys, what you got.

Okay, cool. So I wanted to talk real quickly about some specific systems for like let's say a new business came to you. What are some like low hanging fruit systems that almost any business could set up in their business to like early on that maybe most people miss or something.

So the best thing that you can do, and this is the first step in systemology, it's the defined stage. So you need to narrow your focus. When you start to systemize. You want 10 to 15 systems that you focus on. It's the classic 80, 20. You want to think what is the 20% of the systems that give you 80% of the impact. And I've worked with so many businesses that I've realized that that is the magic. If you can figure out what they are, it'll just change the game. Sometimes doing onesies and twosies systems here and there doesn't have enough of an impact that the business owner recognizes it. But if you get these 10 to 15 down, I can guarantee it will change the game. And it's a really simple exercise. Anyone listening can do this. You get yourself an A4 bit of paper in the top left hand corner. You scribble down what your target audience is of your data dream client. So just think about the ones that pay your prices, that refer that comeback. Just think about that dream client. Then the next line down, think what is the primary product or service that would be a fantastic gateway to the rest of your products and services. Where would you like them to get started? And you list that and then you move into what I call the critical client flow, the ccf. And it's a linear journey. So you're going to like this, Matt. We start off at the top of the page and we're. And we think, how do you grab attention and always think about how you're doing things currently, not how you would like them to be. So you would think about, oh, we do some SEO, you know, for you guys, you're doing podcasts, you're doing, you know, whatever it may be. And along the top line you think, how do you get attention? Then the next line down is inquiry. How do you handle an inbound inquiry when it comes into your business? And you literally draw out some boxes, almost like a flowchart on this, a four bit of paper and work your way down the page. So you've got inquiry underneath inquiry. And the next one down is the sales process. Like how do you handle that incoming lead or that after that inquiry and you've qualified them as someone is interested, you know, do you have a proposal? Do you meet with them on Zoom? Do you just. And you're keeping it really simple to start with. You just have your sales process. Then the next one down is once they decide that they want to go ahead, then it's the money stage. How do you take the money? Do you invoice half up front? Do you invoice half on completion? Do you do a bit of both all up front? Whatever, that's the money one. Then you move down. Then how do you onboard the client? So how do you set up that project for success? To make sure that you set the right expectations and then you get them in and then you move down the next line. How do you delete the core product or service? Then the final one is how you do handover and how do you get them to repeat and come back? You define the critical client flow for your dream clients with your single product or service and then think about how you get the attention all the way through to delivery and getting them to come back. Do it simply in each of the boxes at Each of those levels don't use more than two or three words to describe it initially, just very basic. And what you've done with the critical client flow is identified the 10 to 15 high level systems that when you systemize, the aim of the game here is to get the business to make money without key person dependency. So if you can deliver that without the business owner, without any team member, you've just created a money machine. So start there before anything else. And I tell people to do the critical client flow before we move into some of the later stages of Systemology, which we think about scale and then we think about HR and all those sorts of things. And within the critical client flow, if you think about it as the boundary around like a football field, you want everybody to stay inside that boundary. But if you want to play in a particular area, that's okay. You might go, I don't have enough leads. So maybe you really focus in on your attention generating systems. You might go, hey, I keep on having these problem clients and they're always following me up and they're annoying me and they've got questions and you go, well, maybe I need to focus on my onboarding systems. So as long as you stay within the critical client flow, you can then narrow your focus even more into the problem areas that you're having in the business. But that's yes, step one in systemology is the defined stage.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, it's like 80, 20 thing too. I think it's cool to identify where the heck the money's coming from. And like you said, said and I think that's where most businesses can operate to release, you know, dependency of just work, work, work. But now you have all these other opportunities, but you still have the money machine like that that's protected still.

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I wanted to ask about too is I wanted to, I wanted to learn a little bit about System Hub because System Hub is, it's a software platform, right?

Yeah.

Can you, can you tell me a little bit about what it is? I'm actually completely flying blind there. I'm actually unfamiliar. I'm more familiar with, you know, your book and the stuff that you teach. What is the software do.

So System Hub actually came first before Systemology. So it's a cloud based platform that stores businesses, systems and processes in the cloud. And the whole premise behind it is to keep it simple because people try and overcomplicate it. They're trying to do these fancy workflows and dependencies. You check this off and then it checks that off and then they get confused between project management and the systems documentation side of things. They're trying to use things where the workflows you checking off on your actual documentation. Which I actually think it should be kept separate. Systems and processes needs to live on its own. It needs to be simple. At the best of times, systems and processes have some level of friction. No matter how systemized the business is, no matter how much people love systems, there's a level of friction there. So the aim of the game is actually to reduce friction, to make it so easy that there's no onboarding. And I know I see people using things like Word documents and popping them in Dropbox folders and Google Drive and then they try and use, you know, maybe they try and use Google Docs to do it. And then I see they create these index files which list out all of the systems and you have to click on those index one then to go off to other document. Like it's just clunky. So we, I decided to build the platform first, System Hub and that's been going for about four or five years now. But then after working with literally thousands of customers, that's what got me to develop systemology because then I realized I was like business owners don't care what software they're using. They really just want the result. They want to systemize business. They want complete business reliability. That's what it is that they're gunning to for. So I thought I actually need to create Systemology first, which is the system to systemize a business because it doesn't matter what tool you use. And I even say, I mean we have a heck of a lot of people who use systemology who use System Hub, but also clients that don't like systemology works on its own. It doesn't care what tools you've got as long as I tell you what tools you need and you can use as long as you have something that solves that problem. Problem, that's really all that matters. And System Hub is just our default recommendation. But it's not by any means the be all and end all. I mean I think it's amazing. In fact, it's life changing and we'll probably cure cancer.

No, no, it's the perfect container for the systems and just. Yeah, that's the thing with Systemology or systemology you don't need System Hub for that. It's something that can use Evernote. Like a lot of our processes are actually at Evernote with tagging and all that Stu.

So yeah, and that's how we actually got started. Combination of Evernote, Dropbox.

And Google Sites. We tried Google Sites, but that was a bit clunky because only one or two team members were updating it. Systems is actually about changing the culture in your business and you want the team to embrace it. It's not a one and done. You don't systemize for three months or six months and then go, I'm done. It's a shift in the way that your business thinks. And now more than ever is the best time in all of history to systemize a business. Because the level of resistance from your staff is the lowest it'll ever be. Because with Corona and you know, all of what's going on with the pandemic, the world is accepting change like never before. It's compressing time. So if you want to introduce systems into your business normally it might take a couple of years to really get in there. You can compress that to probably about 1/5 that time. Because when you go to the team member and say, we need to systemize your particular role historically, they go, why do we need to change? We've always done it this way. Why do I need to do that? And that you'll get some level of resistance from some staff members. But right now you say we have to change. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have to change. Of course, everything's changing. We're working from home. We're doing zoom, zoom. I'm ordering all of my things online now. Now is the best time to systemize.

Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. Well, now I think it's a good time to go ahead and start doing our wrap up questions because I did have, I did want to. I wanted to clarify a few questions before we wrapped up and I was kicking myself for asking those questions, so.

Well, yeah, well, Systemology is, I mean, talk about that, how people can get a hold of that once it's released, which it's coming out now, depending on.

When you're listening to it. In fact, no matter when you listen to it, go to systemology.com book. It'll come out on the 18th of August 2020 and it'll come out in hardback Kindle. And the audiobook. The audiobook's real fun though, because I got Michael Gerber to read the forward and we actually. Yeah, there's a few secret. I won't spoil it. There are Easter eggs in that audio version.

I heard you actually sing some of the chapters. Is that true?

You gotta wait Though, you gotta, like, just really listen closely.

I don't want to spoil it for you guys.

Yeah. So systemology.com book is the best way to find out about it, depending on when it's out. But it'll be on Amazon, on Audible, and I'm biased. But I'm super excited to get this book out. I've got some really good feedback. I had one of my, you know, if I think about the other OGs in the space, I. Geno Wickman, and I touched on his book earlier. Earlier Rocket Fuel. He wrote another book, Traction, which I'm like when I think about Scaling Up. Scaling up by Vernon Harnisch was a great book, but it just felt like a dump of tools. Here are all of these tools all mishmashed together. When I read Traction, and I think. I bet Matt would appreciate Traction as well, because it felt like a linear version of Scaling Up. Like, it actually felt like the operating system with step one, step two, step three. So anyway, I sent a copy to Gino and he came back and he. He said, look, this book needs to be read by all business owners and their leadership teams. But I had.

So much great feedback coming through. I think what I've managed to do is because I am the creative visionary thinker, but I have an appreciation for systems like Matt. It's a very rare combination to get those two. And that's why there is so little work in this space that's done very well, because it's actually a blind spot for business owners and visionaries because they don't naturally think this way. And that's why I was really compelled to write the book, because I just felt like there's a huge hole in the market for how do I Systemize, where do I start? And systemology.com bookistheway There you go.

Go get it, y'. All. You've mentioned other amazing. Tons of books here that are great references as well, but start with Systemology. And definitely E. Myth is a great one. Obviously, if you haven't read that one, go pick that up in the same process. Get them both. Awesome. Well, David, appreciate your time very much, man. And I can't wait to hear how it goes. Want to hear some more stories?

Thanks for having me, guys. It was an absolute pleasure.

Take care. Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew knew that. And Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. And I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time. And Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of Easy Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars as well. And right now, you know, Easy Webinar, these guys are actually hooking me up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, Soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hub, that's H U S T L E if you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can go grab a free trial and EZ webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing with webinars, I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times and all these crazy things features in between. Can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics, what's working, what's not. During your webinar, based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're going to make more money and you're going to work less with this thing and you're going to create better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle. That's easywebinar.com hustole. Alrighty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did, if you lasted this long. And go check out Easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time. Bye Bye.

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