111. Mental Blocks to System Building

Foreign. Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here, your host of leadership in a nutshell, where you and I are working on cracking that code of the driven mind. And I'm super honored and super excited to have you with me here today. Episode 111. Can you believe that? That is wild to me. We're 111 episodes in today. I want to talk to you about mental blocks to system building. So I don't get tactical very often, and I'm not going to get super tactical today either, but I just really want you to think about system building. I was recently got to be involved in a session with a group of managers, and system building was a big focus of it. And I look at my life and my ability to build systems. I was introduced to systems way back in the day, back In December of 2000, I became a certified E Myth consultant. And at the time, Michael Gerber, the author of the E. Myth, ran that organization still. It was before whatever divorce situation, different things took place and the business changed, whatever. But back then, Michael ran kind of the certification process and some of that. And the E Myth, for those of you that don't know E Myth, it's about the stands for the entrepreneurial myth, meaning that because. Because I understand the work that a business does, then of course, I'm capable of running a company that does that work. Nothing further from the truth. You and I both know, especially in home services, anybody can buy a ladder and a few pieces of equipment, and they're in business. Depending on your state or your province, it depends on licensing and certain things. But we all know that just passing the test for a license doesn't make you capable of certain things either. And so today I really, I want to, you know, just check in with system building and why there's some blocks that show up because, you know, I've committed my life to understanding the human brain and the human experience that we're having together on, you know, during this walk we call life. And I think that we know that systems set us free, but there's also this part of us that resists it. And we actually have some mental blocks that get identified from it. And the only reason I share my E Myth experience is because that was when Gerber really exposed me to systematizing every. Every part of the business. And it really made sense to me. And I just want to share with you that, in fact, it made so much sense to me, I tried to systematize the human experience and the human relationship even. So if you picture a pendulum, like, all the way to the right is the pendulum swings all the way over there to where I rely on people to do everything in the business any way that they want. Just go figure it out, get it done. So then I get exposed to system building and I'm like, oh my gosh, systems can set me free. So I swung my pendulum all the way to the left and said what? I build systems and then people operate the system and the system manages the people. Sign me up. I'm all in. This is perfect. Okay. And I really lost human connection. And those of you that know me now or have listened for a while, you know how much I just absolutely love people. I feel so grateful to be on this planet. I feel so blessed to have relationships in my life. And with those of you that I've never met that, that spend time and commit 10, 15 minutes a week with me, I don't take that lightly. I feel very blessed by that. But I went through a phase in my career where I was like, systems are everything now. Systems are huge. They're a massive part of what you do and your freedom creation as a leader for sure. But it's also not everything. And I just wanted to kind of touch base today on why do we have mental blocks? And so I was able to build a self managing plumbing, heating air business at a pretty young age because I focused on building systems and I removed the mental blocks that many of you have. One of those blocks is I'm better than others at blank, Fill in the blank. So I'm better than other people at doing whatever this is. That is a mental block. Now you may be better than somebody at a specific thing. For me, I was very gifted that I wasn't that much better than other. I was never a really good technician. I was great at sales and I hung my hat there. But when it came to kind of doing the work or getting operations done, that's never been my forte. I'm great at vision, I'm great at strategy, I'm great at asking questions. I'm great at uncovering blockers. But I'm not great at actually doing the work or any of those types of things. And so for me, I didn't have a major block around that. I actually found freedom in creating a system that someone else could run and get results. Now the reason that some of you have a mental block around that is there's no value in that for you. There's no ego validation. I don't mean you've got a big ego. I don't mean that negatively. We all have ego. We have what I call the small ego and the big ego. And the small ego is about scarcity and fear and pain and suffering. And the big ego is about God and the divine and love and bliss and peace and all that. And so they're both existing within us and we just want to make sure that we're feeding the right one. And so when you look at, you know, when I had a self managing, plumbing, heating, people would say, man, I, I wish my company ran like yours. And I would say, no you don't. And they're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, no, you really don't. Well, no, I really do, Kenny, you don't know. Here's the deal. I get identity at that time, I got identity out of not really knowing a lot of what was going on in the daily operation. Many of you get identity from understanding and knowing everything about the operation and what takes place. So each level of leadership that you are removed from the front line, you begin losing contact and context with what's taking place and you really begin relying on both the system and the person. And so, you know, there's a thing in management called make the system the heavy. Like here's the system. You've got to do certain things now with technology, we utilize technology. Oh, you have to do this or click this box before you can go here in a sales presentation or call taking situation or whatever the case may be. Right. So what I really want you to think about are what are the blocks? So one is your brain is a problem solving tool and when you solve a problem for good, your brain kind of freaks out. So I'm going to actually talk to you about that a lot next episode and episode 112. I'm going to talk to you a little deeper about that. So make sure you come back next week. I didn't realize I was going to see that, but I'm just, I'm pumped about next week as well. And so I, I, I'm going to talk more about that. And so right now though, when you think about, I want to solve this problem, the challenge is as soon as you solve the problem, the brain goes, oh crap, I need something else to solve. And so sometimes it will continue on or you roll out a system and it's like, wait a minute, I need to tweak that or change that and that's okay. And so we've got a mental block around do I really want to solve this at a, at a cellular level? I know on a, on A mental level, on a conscious level, I know I want to solve this, but we've got to go a layer deeper than that, and we've got to look at the subconscious. Do I subconsciously really want to solve this, or is it going to expose me from a value standpoint? If I systematize my job as a leader, if I'm not the owner of the business, am I going to say, well, wait a minute, I just kind of systematized myself out of a job. Wait a minute, everybody's gonna know all of a sudden, I'm gonna. They're gonna shine the light on it, realize I don't do that much during the day. And some of you are like, stop it, I'll never see that day. And others of you are like, yeah, I've got a pretty good team together, and I've got a pretty good deck of systems built, and I'm sometimes not sure what to do. Now I'll speak to the owners directly. The owners and entrepreneurs on the line. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you that have. You're on right now going, I'm not sure what I'm going to do after I finish this podcast today. And that's one of the fears of building systems when it makes. When it starts working. You know, I used to. I went through a phase in my career where a lot of my technicians went on their own and started businesses because we made it look so damn easy. And some of you can relate. And the barrier of entry, even before software was like, oh, well, heck, you're charging $42 an hour back then, or whatever. Like, you're only paying me 10 back then, or whatever the number was like 8 or 10. Like, I'll go do that. You know, we all have the same thing. Even if you're charging 400 bucks an hour now, people are like, wait a minute, all the different things that happen. And so I need a problem to solve unconsciously in my brain. Another thing I'm looking for control. And so I don't feel like I have as much control once I systematize. Now let me land that for a moment, because you're going, well, hang on, isn't that the whole point of a system? So the system has control. Ah, yes, my friend. But mentally, I start going, damn, did I. Am I losing control because I handed this thing off? Check yourself there. But once we get it out, then we're afraid. Like, well, what if I have to tweak it? What if I have to change it? Perfection is A mental block. Well, I got to get it nailed. I got to get it perfect. Stop it. You don't need it perfect. You need it started. So fear is a big mental block. Well, I'm going to roll it out wrong. I'm going to roll it out and have to change it. Guess what? Yes, you're going to roll it out wrong. Because there is no such thing as perfection. And exactly how you roll it out, it is perfect. So maybe I just contradicted myself. Everything is perfect because you're in the game of life and that's what it out. So getting started is the key. And the biggest mental block to system building is getting started. Because I go, well, I don't have clarity. So, you know, going back to the Stephen Covey begin with the end of mind. Well, I know kind of what I want, or sometimes I'm not even sure what I want. But this task keeps getting done wrong in the business or this thing happens wrong. So what I want you to think about is clarity only goes so far because lack of clarity is a big reason we won't get started. And perfectionism jumps into my mind because I think, oh, I got to be perfect before I. No, you don't have to be perfect before you start. You just need to get in the game. So there's three things that I want you to take away today. Mental blocks to system building. Number one, get some clarity. Get clear about what you're doing, why you're doing it. Like, what's the point? What is the evidence that you have a problem or an opportunity with a system? What's the evidence that exists? Does this happen very often? Is the Pareto principle at play? 8020 rule. If 20% of the time it's getting done right now, we probably better build a system for it. If 80% of the time it's being done right, well, then maybe I, maybe I've got other fires to go look at or put out. So one, get some clarity. Two, get started, get something in the game. Get a mental draft, rocking, get going. And three, get tweaking. No, I'm not talking about tweaking like a crackhead tweaker or whatever, right? I'm talking about tweaking your system. Get clarity, get started and get to tweaking it. It's going to need some attention. It's going to need. So the deal is you can build so much inside, but until you test it, you know, my dad did some racing for a while and we can, we can build the race car on pit road, but then as soon as we get it in the race, then we're going to learn things. And the same is true in business and in systems. Get it out there, get some hands on it, get some people putting their own fingerprints on it, then we get buy in, Then they feel part of the process. So now as I'm tweaking it, I'm also keeping my team involved. So Mental Blocks, my friend, to System Building. It's a huge challenge and it's a huge opportunity. Get some clarity, get started, get to tweaking, and meet me here next week. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Thank you so much for being here. Episode 111 Mental Blocks of System Building. Remove those blocks and get rolling until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week and I'll see you next time. Sam.