How to Build a Business That Runs Without You

You didn't start a business to answer the same 5 questions every single day. And yet, here you are. You're the fixer, the decider, the human Google Docs where all the answers live. If your team can't move without checking in with you and your phone feels like a leash instead of a tool, there's a reason for that. And it's costing you time, energy, growth, And probably your sanity. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that the customers and employees I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I'm so glad you're here with me for this episode today because my guest is Rory Prendergast. And today, we are showing business owners how to stop being the bottleneck, escape the daily firefighting, and reclaim 25 to 35 hours a week by systemizing how we make decisions. And actually, those decisions get made In their businesses. Of course, the price of admission today is please make sure you subscribe to this podcast. And please make sure you share it with your circle of friends. I'd love to see the business community really kind of supporting what we've been doing since, oh, March of 2020. And it's absolutely free. Each and every week, we bring you new content that excites, that stimulates business operations and business owners. So, Please feel free to make sure you share the episode. Okay, so let me guess. You've tried SOPs. You've written things down. You've hired good people. And maybe you even think, hmm, if I just hire one more manager, things will finally get better. And yet, you're still stuck in the weeds. That's because most businesses don't have a systems problem. They have a thinking problem. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, if you disappeared for 2 weeks, would your business keep moving forward? Or would every decision come to a dead stop? I'd love to know what your thoughts are. Go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put down your comments and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, I'm so glad that you're here today because my guest today is Rory Prendergast. And today, Rory, we're going to be talking about something that I don't think we talk about too often. As an introduction, Rory has built and sold 3 multi-million dollar businesses. He scaled a franchise across across 3 continents in a single year and somehow managed to run his company while sailing across the Atlantic with no phone and no email, which already makes him more relaxed than most owners on a Tuesday afternoon. Today, Rory helps founders escape the grind by systemizing their business in just 90 days. Not with binders full of SOPs that nobody reads but with simple powerful operating framework that teaches teams how to think, make decisions, and take ownership. His mission is really simple. Make bigger lives by building businesses that don't rely on one exhausted human holding everything together. Rory, welcome to the show! It's so great to have you.

Marc, thank you so much. It's really, really nice to be here. Yeah, looking forward to talking to you about all this.

So maybe before we get into today's topic, could we dig a little bit deeper into how you serve your clients? Who are your clients? What are the outcomes that you typically get when you're working with people? Yeah.

So, the people that we work with are generally businesses that usually are between 5 to 50 employees. They could be in all kinds of sectors, but we do a lot of work in construction sector and automotive and with professional services and healthcare and that kind of thing. And they're working 60 hours a week. We spend 3 months with them and we get 30 of those hours back for them in general, somewhere between 25 and 30 hours a week back. Then, what do they do with that time? They don't go sit on the beach for most of them. It's like using that time then to be able to grow the business or to expand to other locations or sometimes even to start a charity or a different business completely.

Wow! Yeah, no. And when I first saw the notes for the show today, I remember thinking 25 to 35 hours a week is like, I mean, that's a full-time job that you're sitting and doing.

It is a full-time job. Yeah. And when I talk to people sometimes and I say like, do you work 60 hours a week? And they say like, You mean part-time, right? Because some people are doing way more than that, right?

Oh yeah. Oh, I remember when I was starting off as an entrepreneur. I mean, I was putting 80-85 hours a week easily into my business, right? I've seen— but I've seen the situations that I described earlier time and time again. I've gone into— I was working as an economic development officer for a community and I got to peek into all these different businesses. And so, whether it was a restaurant, a welding shop, a transportation company, the owners and the managers always felt kind of tethered to their business. So, when people are tuning in and they feel that they are tethered to their business, like, I just can't leave for a minute without things going awry, what's really going on?

Yeah. So, and that feels impossible, right? When you say, right, I can't leave because things are going to fall apart. And people immediately think, well, okay, my business is different. Like, I definitely can't leave my business. But really, like what's happening here is that As an owner, you probably started out your business self-employed, right? And you grew from there, but you just kept that self-employed hat with you all the time and you never changed the way you operate. And so what's happened is in general, right, in those businesses, it's like if you think of a bicycle wheel and the owner is the hub of that wheel and all the spokes then have to come through them. So basically every nuanced decision, every judgment call, All has to go through them. And then if they hire more people, that's more spokes and that's more decisions and more questions coming back to them. If they bring on more clients, that's more stuff coming back to them as well. So they end up kind of hitting themselves off a ceiling because everything they have is inside their head. And I guess in some ways as owners, we do love this idea that when a problem comes up, we can just jump in, we can solve it in 20 seconds, right? Where nobody else can do that, right? We like that kind of ego buzz. That's a bit of a challenge. Basically, what it means is we've kept the whole business in our head and our team doesn't have access to our head. So, they can't make those calls.

Yeah.

But would it be fair to say that there are some owners out there that have this hero complex that they need to validate their existence by having people come to them and say, boss, boss, boss, I need you?

Yeah. And I guess there's people that are happy to do that. They probably won't admit it. But for most people, there's a bit of a love-hate about that because yeah, you get a bit of a buzz out of it. But you know it's destroying your life at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for the people who are tuning in, to your point, I don't think anybody wakes up one day and says, oh my goodness, I'm the cause of all my angst. What are some of the warning signs that an owner might have become the bottleneck to their business now?

Yeah. So, I think one of the first ones and clearest one for me is like that 60+ hours a week, right? We think You think that's normal? It definitely does not have to be normal. An inability to get to work on the business, to get on that strategic stuff, to grow the business and that kind of thing because you're just too caught up in the day-to-day. Another one might be that you are the one that every customer wants to talk to. So, they have your number or they have your name, even though it's a different name above the door. And I think the most frustrating one for people is They've got like 10 employees and they're just so frustrated that those employees keep coming back and asking the same question day in and day out with just a tiny little nuance to it. And they're just full up with that. And that's kind of what's taking their time every single day. And it stops them doing all those other things and working on the business.

I can't help but wonder how much of that is based on kind of the cultural trust system internally versus systems in general? Is it because trust is low and people are just afraid to make a mistake that they're feeling they need to do this? Or is it just an empowerment issue?

I think it's more an empowerment issue. I think what happens when the word trust comes up in my conversations with owners, it's more that the business owner is going to say, I can't trust my team to do that. Not because they're bad people or anything like that. But it's just that they feel like they don't have all the information to be able to make it. So here's one thing that people say to me a lot. A lot of the decisions I make in my business are common sense. I'm the only one that seems to have the common sense. My team doesn't seem to have it. And there's a reason behind that. Yes.

And so, yeah, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say when I hear that, what's happening there is it's common sense to you because you see all the elements in the business. You see the cash flow, you see the Google reviews, you see all those little elements, right? Whereas most of the time, your team just sees the one thing they're working on. And so, they can't have the common sense that you have because they don't see everything.

And so, unless you're there coaching in some form or fashion, they're never going to pick that up.

True. Yeah. And even if you— a lot of business owners, when they realize they have that problem, they try and communicate that to people. all the time, but they communicate it in a way that's okay. When we had this problem today, this is how I thought about it. We had that problem yesterday, that's how I thought about it. And so it's all little instances, and those instances never really crop up again exactly the same way. So it's very hard for a team to be able to pick that up and learn that and be able to use that to make decisions. It happens sometimes by osmosis when somebody's been with you 15 years, but it's That's way too long, obviously.

Yeah, I know that a lot of businesses will try to conquer this by having SOPs. It's like, okay, we're gonna sit down. Everybody write out what you do and let's create an SOP. And I find that more times than not, they don't even get through writing the SOP before they've given up on them. So, why are the current systems or attempts at systems not working?

Yeah, so yeah, most people go to SOPs first as you say, right? That's their first protocol. So, the problems with that is the first thing is there's like way, if you try and just document everything, there's just way too much to document. You could end up with a 300-page book or a 500-page book or whatever it is that really is not user-friendly.

Right.

So that's the main thing. But the second thing is that people just don't follow the systems because they find it easier to go back to the boss and just ask them the question. So even if they do manage to get SOPs operating, it usually lasts somewhere between 3 and 6 weeks. And then, everybody reverts back to the easier way of doing things. So, you've got to have a system in place to make sure that if you're using SOPs, those SOPs are actually being used every single day with an accountability and measurement system.

I do know that a lot of people, they go through— they get through these phases of frustrations like, oh, if I could just fire everybody and start over, things would be different. Or, if I could just hire someone like me. Why is this line of thinking? Why is this a huge myth? In business.

Okay. I think it's a natural way of thinking, right? Because if you could hire somebody like me, right? A lot of the people I'm talking to say, can I clone myself? Right? And they're surprised when I say, you actually can. Right? But the problem with just hiring, get rid of everybody and hiring a new batch of people is those people still don't know how you think. Right? They still don't have all those elements in the business and they're still not going to have that common sense. So, it doesn't really matter just changing the people. It's rarely about the people, right? It might be. There might be 1 or 2 people in there that are not a great fit. But it's rarely about the whole team or changing the whole team. But cloning, that's an interesting thought.

And if you have a system to make that happen, that's what we're talking about today. So, when we come back, I'd love to uncover how leaders can get that 25 to 35 hours of their life back. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with Rory Pendergrass. We're talking about how to reclaim time. Rory, how do business owners actually make decisions in their business? Because most of them have never— I don't think that anybody really stops to think about that. I think so often to your point, they started off as a solopreneur or a small team. They started a business. And it's just evolved into what it is today. So, how are they making decisions?

Yeah, it's a really good question. And it's for the business owner themselves. It's almost an impossible question to answer on your own, right? Because we've built up over time a framework for making decisions. But it's way back here. It's like in your subconscious, right? It's not in the front of your brain, right? And what happens there, and I'm sure you felt this, I felt this, and nearly every other business owner I've spoken to is that as you build up a level of experience, you get this feeling that I've got an instinct for this. When a problem happens, or I could spot something with the customer way before anybody sees anything, and I can just deal with it, right? It's just like this instinct. And here's the major challenge with that. If that is instinct, we're all in big trouble because we can't move instinct from one person to another.

Right.

There's got to be something else, right? So the way I see this is that over that period of time, over the 10 years we've had our business or the 5 years or whatever it is, yes, we have built up a certain amount of instinct in there, but really what we've created for ourselves is a framework for making decisions. Again, that sits right back here in your subconscious. So if I say to you, what's your framework? You can't answer that. I know you can't. When we sit down with clients and we ask them questions, we know they can't answer them. We've just got to start there and then work our way around. But here's what I like in it, and hopefully this will explain it to people. So I liken it to scales. So problem comes in with a customer, let's say, and you have in the back of your head, you've got the scales and you've certain elements that you balance on those scales. You've got your Google reviews. You've got actually, that would be a really good customer. They could bring us a lot more customers if we actually solve this problem. You've got the margin that you have on that customer. You've got maybe that customer is a total pain in the ass, right? And so, all these things have been balanced up. And when that scale falls into balance, the answer comes out, right? But you do that in nanoseconds in your head. And that's why it feels like instinct. Does that make sense?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so, is that something then that the staff aren't trained to do? Is that what the challenge is?

It's basically how to think in the business. And the staff have never been trained how to do that. And they can't ever be trained to do that. Unless, is what I say to people, unless we actually extract that scales out of your brain, build it outside your head, and then teach your team how to use it. And when I say that to people, I say, what would happen if we were able to do that? Because they think it's not possible for a start, so it's okay to play around with it. I say, what would happen if we did that? And they go, oh man, then I wouldn't have to make this call today. It'd be magical. It would be magical, yeah. And that would give me, I would only have to work a day a week or 2 days a week or whatever it is. So, that's really the answer. I think I forgot the question you asked me. But I think it was how do business owners make decisions? That's really kind of how we do it using that kind of scales.

And so, if the real issue then isn't like having things written down, SOPs and value systems and missions and visions on the wall, what's the first thing owners need to do in order then to extract this information from their head So the business can basically start running without them.

Yeah. So I think one of the first things they need to do is they need to get some help from somebody else. It doesn't have to be me, but somebody has to help them. Your coach or whatever it is. Because you can't see this for yourself. So if you think about how you make a decision, if I— let's use me as an example. If I think about how I make a decision, so much stuff is happening automatically and subconsciously that I skip steps. In my head if I'm trying to write it down. I just jump from one to the other to the other. So you need somebody else to be able to challenge all that, somebody who doesn't know your business and doesn't know you and can take that stuff and actually make that work. So what we do then is sit with them and use a process, our extraction process, for actually asking the right questions to be able to download everything from their brain. And we're going to end up with a couple of hundred pages of stuff, right? That in itself is not workable. We have to condense that down into a very simple framework that we can fit on one page that we can actually teach the team how to use.

Wow! Like that sounds huge. That sounds like a really daunting process. But you say that you do this relatively in a short amount of time.

It does sound like a daunting process, right? And the thing is, when we're talking to people, they're saying, oh, and I've got to prepare all this stuff and how am I going to know everything that you need to know? But that's where I say, okay, don't prepare anything. Just sit and let us deal with it. Because through the process we use for extraction, which is really just asking questions with a little bit of psychology behind it and that kind of thing, and having the experience of having built thousands of these before, We're able to kind of dig around in the back of your brain, extract all that information, and then be able to look at the team and say, okay, what are the elements here that are critically important? What are the elements that sit on that scale if you want to think about it like that? What things do we put on that scale to make decisions? And we can 99% of the time get that down onto one page for the team.

Wow!

And I know it sounds crazy, right? I know this sounds crazy. But That's why I use this example. Could I share this example about how we were working with somebody? Sure, please.

Yeah.

Because just like, so I was working with this client of ours called Eric, right? And Eric was doing, I think it was like 67 hours a week. And his problem was that he wanted to grow the business. He wanted to expand to new locations. But every time he sat down to do something, somebody walked into his office, texted him, called him, or emailed him saying, We've got a problem with this customer. We don't have the materials for that. How do we price this? The customer wants a discount, whatever it is, right? So we built Eric's decision-making framework for him, and I showed it to him. And Eric said to me, Rory, that is not going to work in my business. And I said, why is that, Eric? He said, because my guys don't care. They come in here 9 to 5, They want to go home then and they want to have a beer afterwards. They're probably going to shut down at like 4:59, right? So I said I had to put a bet on with him. I said, okay, we put a bet on and if this doesn't work, then I'm going to give you all your money back. So he said, okay. So what he did was he put that on the outside of his office door and he told his team that nobody comes into my office, texts me, rings me, or asks me a question until they've read that first. And then they come and tell me what they're going to do, what decision they're going to make themselves. So he said to me, I'll try this for a month. So 4 days later, I got this call from Eric and I went, oh no, this is messed up. I've got to lose the bet. And he said, Rory, you're not going to believe this. I've told the guys to stop coming back to my office because every time they came in with a decision after going through the framework, it was about 90 to 95% of what I would've done in the same situation. So, I stopped them coming in. Now, he went from those 67 hours a week down to 6.

Wow.

So, he comes in 2 days a week now. He spends about, I think it's like 12, 15 hours in total roaming around the business, but he works 6 hours. Now, I'm not promising that to people. I'm promising we're getting you down to 6 hours. But just, that just kind of shows the power of that framework. And And also, I also say that, to be honest, just to illustrate that, look, you might say, okay, this is never going to work for my business. But just like Eric did, he didn't believe it, but tried it out and saw what happened.

Fascinating. Could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with you? I have a sneaking suspicion that would resonate with a lot of the audience.

Yeah. So, RoryPrendergast.com. So, it's RoryPrendergast.com is my website. So, you can get me on there and drop us an email. I think that you have in the show notes as well. We've got a little audit that we're going to give people as well where they can actually take an audit to, if you don't know what the next step is for your system, that will help you identify what the next step would be for you.

Lovely! Thank you for sharing that. So, can you walk us through? You said it's a 3-step process that helps owners stopping the bottlenecks. Can you walk us through that process?

Yeah, sure. So, I guess like we talked about SOPs. not being the solution, but they're part of a solution at the same time.

Right.

So, the first piece is building this decision-making framework for the team. And that generally will solve about 80% of the problems that are going to be solved. And one of my clients said to me one day that I hadn't thought of this, but one of my clients said to me, oh, Rory, I get it. So, this is how to think in my business. So, that's what the framework does. It teaches people how to think in the business. So, that is step 1. The next thing we need is we also do need some SOPs. But the way we look at SOPs, like my focus is always on the owner. When I think about systems, I think, okay, what needs to be happening here in order for the owner not to be here? That's for me what systemizing is about. And so, when we come to systems, we want to look at the process mapping and SOPs, but we want to do it in a way that we've built a framework and now we're going to look at the business as a whole and try and identify what are the critical processes that need to be built so that that business owner can be free. So not what are the easy ones to build, what are the ones we like to build, what are the ones that will build freedom from the owner, right? So that takes a lot less time and there's a lot less of them. So that automatically we can do quite quickly. Then, there's this challenge that if I was Harry Potter today, Marc, and I'm saying, okay, I'm going to do this for you now. And I'm going to extract your decision-making framework from your brain. And I'm going to build out the processes that you need. And we're going to give them to your team today. And then, your team are going to be able to run with that and they're going to love it. So, let's say we just did that. Then, I would give it probably like 3 to 6 weeks before they would start to revert back to their old way of doing things. So, we're missing a piece. And that piece is an accountability and measurement system. So, we build an accountability and measurement system that gives you the confidence to know that everything is being done by the right person, the right way, with the right result for your client and for your bottom line. Because without that, you can't step away without that confidence. Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense.

So basically, there are the 3 steps. Yeah.

It's also trust building, right? That accountability part is the trust building.

Absolutely. Yeah. And here's the thing about accountability as well. Most of the time when we think about accountability, we're thinking about people filling in checklists and pushing down on our team, right? And none of us really want to do that, right? That kind of micromanagement. And none of our team want that either. So, we want to do accountability a different way. where the team actually raises up to actually want this and they hold themselves accountable rather than you having to come and push on them all the time.

I imagine that the team just gets lit when they're given this opportunity.

Yeah, yeah. So, if you take that example of Eric we talked about earlier on where he was saying, okay, now my team, they're not those kinds of guys. They're not going to get it. But in his words, he said, okay, my team really stepped up. And then 2 of my team stepped up even further and they became then the people that they report to him now and everybody else reports to them. One guy left because he realized that, okay, there's accountability here, there's decision-making, and that's not me. He was hiding in the corner most of the time and getting other people to do that. So he left. And that's a risk that's going to happen. But is it a risk really if that person walks away? Not really, I think. But the other thing that happens as well is then usually after people do this, their business starts to grow. They need to recruit. And if you take this framework in your recruitment process, and I mean metaphorically, right? I'm not walking around with a placard outside with it, right? But if we take that and we use that to recruit, we'll find that will the people come towards us in the recruitment process? They'll see that and they go, uh-uh, that's not for me.

Right.

But then, you've got a guy maybe, or a girl who's working in another company, not looking for another role but sees that and goes, I'd much rather work over there. Right? And that's where you start to have that magnet where you attract the right people and you kind of— the other polarity then repels the wrong people away from you.

Yeah. I have not met people too often who don't enjoy the autonomy of being in control of how and what they do. And so, this to me just sounds thrilling. Like if we can get people into doing this because to your point, you'll always have the owners and managers going, no, you don't understand. I work with a bunch of mechanics and nobody would. No, right? And there's always that excuse, right? They have— they're in their own little bubble. They have their own blinders on and they think what they're experiencing, nobody else is experiencing.

Yeah. And especially, we see that around, as you say, mechanics, around construction, Those kind of trade-orientated businesses. But you do see it everywhere as well. And I think if we just gave, as owners, if we gave our team a little bit more credit and just gave them the opportunity to be able to make decisions in the right way, not the way we think will work, then everybody would be happier, right? And that's where we get to make bigger lives, right?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, you're speaking to the choir. speaking to me about this because I do believe that everybody comes on board. We vet people to be the best. And even when we hire somebody brand spanking new, we're excited. It's like, oh my goodness! I just hired Jim. I can't believe— like Jim brings so much capacity. And then, 3 months later, it's like, I don't know what happened to Jim. Like I thought he could do this and this and this and this. And he probably could. But our existing systems and our existing management style— Yeah, kind of probably just Quashed poor Jim.

Yeah. So, that happens. And here's the other thing though, that sometimes the other thing happens that we hire Jim and we bring Jim in. We're excited for him. He starts. Everything's great. And then, we just wonder, like, is Jim really the guy? And then, 3 months have passed and you go, oh, I'll give him another couple of months. And then, oh, all right. Yeah, I think I'll give him another little while. And if I let him go now, then I have to go hire in again. And the next thing, like, 2 years in and you know Jim is the wrong guy, but you had no way to measure that, right? And so, you're stuck with Jim now, right? And Jim is stuck with you. Okay, fantastic. But if you had a system in place and Jim comes in, you could probably see in 2 weeks, 3 weeks, Jim can run the system or he can't.

Yes.

And then, that's what makes the difference.

I love that. I'm super, super curious about your one-page framework. When you say you bring it all down to one page, what is contained in that one page that makes it so magical?

Excuse me. Yeah. So, it's a difficult question to answer because every single framework we do for everybody is completely different, right? So, if I'm working with a general contractor construction company who's got like 20 employees and they do new builds and we finish with them and then we go to another general contracting company who does new builds with 20 employees, The framework's completely different, right? Because the owners are different. They make decisions in a different way, right? Does that make sense?

Yes.

But there are certain things that when it comes to making decisions for all of us that we've brought some of them from childhood, right?

Yeah.

Values that we bring, principles that we bring, that kind of thing. A lot of it from mistakes we made 7 years ago, right? Some of it from successes we had 5 years ago. Some of it that we copied from somebody else, something that we read in a book. And what we need to do as part of this is to actually filter down to figure out what are the, let's say, 7 to 10 important principles that really matter for you in your business and how you make decisions. And this is where it's really hard for an owner to filter those down. The other thing about that is they have got to mean the same to Marc as they mean to Rory as they mean to Jim. So it's not like values like you see on the big accounting firms or something like that, integrity, because integrity means something to me, means something else to Jimmy. So we've got to really nail these down to something very specific that becomes a tool for making decisions. So this framework has to be a toolbox that you walk around with for making decisions. So principles are one element. We also We want to look at what we promise our customers, right? And when I say, okay, what do we promise our customer? I hear these fantastic proposals of what we promise our customer. And I'm actually looking for the lowest common denominator. What's the minimum that you're going to promise every single customer? That's what I want to know because it's all great to make those promises, but those promises come at a cost as well.

Sure.

And you as the business owner, you know that, right? But you don't talk about that to your team. Or you don't put that on your website. So, the framework is an internal document. It says some things that you don't really want other people to know outside the business. And so, this is where the scales start to happen, where we said, okay, yeah, we want customer satisfaction, but there's a cost. And you've got to be able to balance that on the scales. We've got those principles, but sometimes that's going to mean we're going to lose a customer if we actually implement that principle. So one of the principles for us, for example, and I've just before this call used it, was tell the truth and risk the consequences. So I had to call this guy and say something to him who's a client thinking he's probably going to leave us. But that's one of our principles. That's what we have to do is one of my team members called me and said, okay, you need to ring this guy and tell him this because we know that's a principle. So that's some of the things. Other things I won't get into because they're difficult to explain. We use regulators for financial the financial part of the decision, various different things like that.

Yeah, it's interesting. As you were saying that, I was flashing back to times when I'd be talking with somebody and they say, well, let me just talk to your boss. Right? And they would defer. And knowing full well that once they got my boss on the line because he wanted to keep the business or whatever, that they were able to get more from him than what we were empowered Yes. And I see this time and time again. I see it in telecommunications when I'm talking to them. And I say, you know what? My contract is over now. I'm going to be looking at what's your best deal, right? And they said, oh, we could do this and this. And then, I call the competitor and I come back. Well, they're going to do this. Oh no, we can't match that. I said, are you sure? Because I'm giving you a chance to save this business before I move on. No, no, wait again. And then, I change. And then, like a week and a half later, I get a call from some higher-up saying, We really loved having you as a loyal customer. We're willing to offer you something. It's like, why didn't you let your staff do that? Oh well, we can't entrust that to everybody. And it's like, well, too little too late.

Too little too late. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

So, okay, in that case, they've lost a bit of business. But like, the business owner is losing his life, right? They don't get the time to spend time with their kids, with their wives. They don't get to go on holidays without having the phone all the time. That's the other thing that happens is we get calls from people that are saying, I've been away on vacation for 2 weeks now and I've had 2 phone calls. I usually have about 12 a day. And that's life-changing.

Sure it is because now actually, the phone calls actually mean something because now it's a 911 situation. This is integrally important. Based on the framework that you've set aside.

Exactly.

And because of that, it's like if I do get a call, I know it's important. I know it's not going to be just another wishy-washy question that I'm just going to have to answer and people are just being lazy.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I love this. I think this is really magical. And of course, they can go onto your website and get more information. They can run through the audit that we're going to put in the show notes.

They can answer the audit, yeah.

I'd like to get into some of kind of the challenges. My fear is somebody will trip over this episode. They'll see something and go, oh, this sounds really good. I'm going to do this. And then, it becomes like the policy of the month. And because of that, it becomes wishy-washy and diluted. I'd love to get into some cautionaries and some pitfalls people should be aware of. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! If this conversation is resonating with you, it's usually because you're responsible for helping people lead better, work smarter, and stop burning themselves out in the process. So, Rory and I spend our time working with leadership teams just like yours who don't need more motivation. They just need clarity, better decision-making, and practical systems that their people can actually use. So, if you're designing an experience, an offsite, a retreat, conference, or a leadership program and you're looking for some help, you're looking for content that helps create real operational change, not just good notes and warm applause, we'd love to connect. No scripts, no fluff, just thoughtful conversations about outcomes, culture, and how to make the work stick long after the event ends. Feel free to reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. There's my shameless plug for us, Rory. Nice one, Marc. So, Rory, what changes first when teams are truly empowered to decide on their own? What will leaders notice first?

Yeah, it's a really good question. So generally, when we're working with people over a 3-month, we kind of set a 3-month framework to get this done. So, we're all accountable on both sides, right? If we just get it done and move on instead of having this rolling thing that never actually finishes. So, in the first month, what we do is we get that framework built. So, we extract the information. And then, at the back end, we don't give homework to our clients. We actually do all the work in the background to actually build that one-page framework. Now, once we have that, we've got pretty much the keys to the kingdom. There's a few more things that need to be done. But once we implement that with the team, which means teach the team how to use it, explain to them why it's there, That's when we start to see the first results. So usually about week 6 working with us, owners will start to say, oh, I'm kind of noticing things are changing a little bit. Jimmy actually hasn't called today. He usually calls me 5 times a day. Or somebody's gone and done something and then come back and said, oh, we had this problem and I did this. Is that okay? And you go, whoa, right? Okay. And you hear people having conversations with customers or clients that you thought they never would be able to have. So, that's when it's about week 6, we start to see that change. But it does take a couple of months before we really start to see those like 25, 30 hours kind of disappear from somebody's week.

A lot of people I deal with are solopreneurs that are now kind of scaling up. They're bringing their first couple of employees on board. Is there anything they should be looking out for? Because of course, they're still in solopreneur mode. What can they do as they start considering, okay, maybe now I need some help. I need to bring 1 or 2 people on board. Is there something in the evolution they need to consider?

Yeah. So, okay, I can answer this a couple of different ways because so remember, my focus is always on extracting the owner, which means that you do need to have a team in place. to do that because otherwise, you extract the owner, then there's nobody to do anything, right?

Right.

So, a couple of things. I guess really my honest piece of advice for somebody in that position when they're on their own is systemize themselves first, systemize the business owner first. And what the hell does that mean? And what I mean by that is to create a structure of accountability and planning for yourself. Get to the point. where your to-do list is crossed off every day, where you've got a longer-term plan that you're knocking little pieces off every single week, and where that is predictable for you, right? Because then that actually starts to free up time in your calendar, even if you've got nobody else working for you. So I think that's the first thing. And then the second thing I would say is that, yeah, before you start to bring people in, just if you could start to build some kind of form of what are the very specific principles I use to make decisions? What is the lowest common denominator for my client? And I really would stress this, get somebody else to extract it from you. Don't try and write it down yourself because you need somebody to challenge your way of thinking. Otherwise, we'd all be able to do this. And I'm not saying come to us, right? Like, go to a coach or whatever it is and try and get somebody else to challenge you on what you're saying and say, okay, but like really, how does that work? And really, how does that work? And dig down to the nitty-gritty of it.

Yeah. So, having that outside perspective is probably the one essential condition that you're saying would make this work better.

Yeah, definitely.

It's interesting. Would it be fair to say that if What we're doing seems to be routine, like we're doing the same kind of things over and over again. Let's say, the way we do cold calling, or the way we do our sales, or the way we do maintenance or follow-ups with customers. If those are routines, those are pretty easy things that we are able to then delegate and kind of create conditions.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. But now, we're in SOP territory, right? So now, we're in, right? These are like, so the kind of things you're talking about there is like it's always step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right? Okay, 90% of the time it doesn't change, right? So, that's like how to do in this business, right?

Then, the decision-making component of it fits into when all this doesn't match up. Like you said, it's 90% of the time. That other 10%, here's how we make decisions That we are then able to problem solve so that we can satisfy the needs of the organization, the needs of the customers.

Exactly. So, somebody wants a discount. Somebody's going to move their plan to another company. Those kinds of things. How do we think about those kinds of things? And sorry, let me just clarify one thing as well. So, we don't have our team walking around with this framework like every day, right? So yeah, in the beginning, we want it in the trucks and we want it in the canteen and we want it on the office door Or whatever, right? But over a period of those 3 months, what actually what we want to do is shift the way that the team actually thinks, right? So, they're not looking at this page. They've just started to think a new way because now they have that scale and they have all the elements that balance on it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for people wanting to make this transition, are there any cautionaries, any pitfalls they should be aware of that it kind of really will sink the ship?

Yeah, I think just what you said earlier on about like, okay, policy of the month, let's just do this, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, there's a few things you need to be careful of. And that one thing, I'm going to just go back to it again, get somebody from outside, right? Somebody who's not in your business, somebody who can't really understand your business without actually digging into like, why is that? And why is that? And why is that? Right? So I would say that's the first thing. The second thing is make sure when you start to create some principles around decision-making that they're so nailed down that they're going to mean the same to Marc, to Rory, to Jimmy, or to anybody else. And that's hard to do. It's very hard to do. If you see yourself using the word integrity, for example, or honesty, you're on the wrong track. And you should have somewhere between 7 and 10 or 11 of those. If you got 3, there's some missing. If you got 15, it's too many. So, what else would I say? Yeah. Then when it comes to that part about mapping out processes, usually what we're going to do is we're going to say, okay, what's the easiest process for us to map out? Let's start with that. That's not the way to go because you're never going to end. Step back from the business and say, what are the major processes in this business? They're the same in every business. There's some kind of strategic process. There's a marketing process. There's a sales process. There's a delivery process. There might be a quality control process, and there's a reporting process. In the middle, then there's maybe some admin and HR and stuff like that. So then step back and look, okay, out of all of those, which are the ones that me as the owner, which are the ones I'm most involved in? And then you look into that and say, okay, what do I need to map out to extract me? Always be saying that to yourself or asking yourself that question. What am I mapping to extract me? Not what's easy to map or what's a shorter map or what could I get Jimmy to map, right? It's what needs to be mapped to extract me. And then you're going to end up with a much smaller list. And then I guess one of the most important things is how do we make sure that this is going to be used every single day?

One of the questions I was going to ask you is going back into, I know lots of leaders who are there. They do have this hero complex stuff. So, how does one hold themselves accountable so that when you do have the list up on the wall and somebody comes knocking and you honor them with your time and realize you're just falling back into your bad— how do we create that intentionality so we don't fall back into our bad habits?

I'm really glad you answered that question because— or you asked that question. Did I say answer that question? Anyway, Because when we build that decision-making framework, not alone does it give immense clarity to our team, right? And usually what we hear from the team is, oh, why didn't you give us this 2 years ago? Because now they suddenly see everything. But it gives you immense clarity as the owner as well.

Yeah.

So now your decisions become easier. So it sometimes happens that if we have a group call and we've got a client who's done their framework, their team are using it and all that kind of thing, and they come with an issue. onto one of our calls and they're just, they're asking a question about recruitment or something. And I'll often say to them, okay, Marc, pull out your one-page framework, put it out in front of you. And now instead of asking me the question, ask that question to the framework. And because it's their decision-making framework that's laid bare in front of them, they go, oh, now I see. So that's, we talked about, you were asking what what keeps the business owner accountable to using the framework with the team. That's what will do it, right? They use it themselves. Then, it becomes clear. I'm not saying it's the answer to every problem. But it's the answer to quite a few.

Well, yeah. Because I always felt that when we try to change culture, I've seen it time and time again where a crisis will lead the managers and the owners back into their old behavior. So, I love that. That if there's some pinnacle to help reroute them into the purpose of what we did 3 months ago, 4 months ago to help keep them accountable and self-accountable by doing that, I think that's a brilliant resource.

Yeah, yeah. But there's another element to this as a general accountability for business owners because we're the only ones that don't have the boss, right?

Right.

So, we can sometimes go off on tangents. Because we like that shiny object, we'll follow that, right? I think it's really important for us as business owners to have accountability, all of us. And so, we have, like in one of our programs, we actually have a team that ring up the business owner every week and say, right, remember that plan we built last year? Well, what's the next step we need to do this week? And they actually ring them up every single week and get that into their diary and then check in with them later on the week to make sure they've done that. It sounds crazy, right?

It sounds crazy.

It's a simple thing. But yeah, and it makes their success predictable then because they've mapped out where they're going. And somebody's helping them just break that out into like micro steps. And then sometimes, somebody's making sure they're doing it.

And so much more valuable than being rung up and saying, okay, hi, it's your coach. So, how was last week?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last week's over.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, because— yeah, sorry.

Go on. No, no, you're just—

No, I was just going to say we can always fool ourselves into— there's specific, maybe even small strategic actions that need to be taken. We can always fool ourselves into that there's something more important because sometimes that strategic thing is like a 2-minute phone call, but it's a hard phone call to make. And you say, okay, well, actually, I could do that Instagram post because that's more important. No, it's not. But we fool ourselves into that, right? So that's where our coach would say, hang on a second, Marc. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. This is what you're supposed to be doing.

Well, and it keeps you from doing the busy work, right? The stuff that you think is important.

Exactly.

This has been such an amazing conversation, Rory. Could you remind everybody again how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, sure.

So, my website is roryprendergast.com. So, roryprendergast.com. So, you can find me there. And then, in the show notes, I think we're going to share a systems audit. So, If you're just wondering, like, well, what's the next thing I need to do to systemize my business? It takes 3, 4 minutes, I think, to do it. It's going to ask you some questions, put in your information, and it'll spit out an answer for you that'll tell you, okay, this will be the next step for you.

Lovely. As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

No, I think it's been a really interesting conversation because you brought stuff out that I wasn't even thinking of talking about around that accountability for business owners and that kind of thing as well. But I guess the thing is, If there was a message I wanted to get to people, right? It's like it does not have to be a 60-hour work week where you're in the weeds grinding through the week doing the stuff that you do not want to do. That's not business life, even though we think that's what's going on all around us. And it is in a lot of cases what's going around it. But basically, I would say it just doesn't have to be that way.

That's easy for you to say. You don't know my business. My business is unique.

Exactly.

Rory, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here and sharing this.

I loved it.

I know from the conversations I've had, this is hugely valuable. So, thank you for doing this.

Yeah, and thank you. I've been really enjoying the conversation, Marc. Appreciate it and talk soon.

I look forward to connecting again. Hey, if you have any questions about today's episode, feel free to reach out. Maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Marc. Or with Rory? Well, good news. You can snag a spot on my calendar. Just hit the link below. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com and you're all set to go. And of course, feel free to reach out to Rory. His contact information is in the show notes as well. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Follow me on social media. We got lots of great content each and every week. And thank you for being here. I appreciate you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.