TES 035 - Systematize Your Business Systems for Accelerated Success

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy, where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solutions show. And in this episode, we're going to talk a bit about business systems. I know you sit back and go business systems, but they're the key to leveraging your time. They're the key to allowing you to remove yourself from your business for time so you can have time to yourself. And in fact, I took 92 days off last year and allowed my business to operate. So when we come back after this brief introduction, I want to talk a bit about what's the keys to a good system, what are the characteristics and what types of systems you need to think about for your business to make sure that you get them in place over time. So when we come back, we'll do that. But before we leave, just want to let you know that every episode, as you know, if you've been with me for a while, you know that every episode comes with a tool, a template, some sort of guide, something that is a tool that you can download and go use to accelerate your success. And for this one, you just Simply go to melabraham.com.

Session 035 to get it. And if you're not at your computer, you're out running around or doing something, just text, text. MyLegacy, one word with no spaces. MyLegacy to 38470. We'll get you the download link so you get all the benefits that you can and we get a chance to support you in your journey. So I'll see you right back after this brief introduction and we'll get into business systems. See you soon. Bye.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer Your questions? Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want, one of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution, the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. Welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode, we take a little time to start to look at business systems. What are the kinds of systems you need? What are the characteristics that should be existing to have a really good system? And you know, a lot of times you sit back and go, systems, this is really boring. And I get it, you know, I get it when you start talking about some of those things. But that's the infrastructure and the structure that's going to allow you to get your time back. It's the way that we get a chance to leverage the things that we do. So for instance, in my world, in some of my businesses.

I have people that are team members that support me and do some of the things that I'm not doing. So there's aspects of my business that I used to do that are very detailed and they were time consuming, but they weren't where my value was there, weren't where I should be placing my time because it wasn't the highest use of my time. You know, my best use of my time is working with you, is creating content. It's about doing the training, it's about interacting with my customers, my clients, the community and building entrepreneurs. It's not about the admin, it's not about the billing, it's not necessarily about the customer service. Now I, I do take on the role for customer experience, but from a customer service standpoint, I've got some of the best people out there. I know that if you've ever dealt with my team, you sit back and go that we've got a world class team. And I thank my team if they're watching or listening for what they've done. And so the key is then really understanding what goes into.

An effective business system. What's the anatomy of a good system? And then what systems might you need to look at putting into place. Now, I'm not saying that you need to go run out and put all kinds of systems in place right away. That would be overkill in many cases. If some of you might be solopreneurs, some of you may just be simply starting out. And so when you look at your systems, you're the one doing all of it. And that's the way all of us typically will start out. But over time, we start to look at things and say, what's the core elements that you need to do? What's the core elements that I need to do? What's the core elements that really create value, that transmit value, that allow you to interact and work with your clients and your customers at the highest level, where you can give the value, and that stuff you want to keep control of, then the other things that are support elements that allow you to deliver at the highest level that stuff. What you'll do is typically create systems in place and allow someone else to maybe manage it while you oversee it. I don't ever want you to take your fingers completely off the pulse of things, because that's when things go awry. That's when potential embezzlements happen or big mistakes happen, or.

Really kind of bad stuff really start to happen. When you're not checking the pulse on the patient on a regular basis, we want to do that. The key, though, is to understand what goes into a system. Then we're going to look at what systems that are typical in a business that you might want to look at, and then asking yourself the question of where your highest value is and how you can create value for your customer, and how putting people in place at the right place at the right time will allow you to then give more to your clients. So let's just look at some of the characteristics, the anatomy of a good system. And the first is that it's customer focused. Everything we do needs to be customer experience focused. What we want to look at is if we're putting a system in place that creates barriers, obstacles, frustrations, friction, resistance in our customers having a relationship with us, the system's no good. I mean, it's a problem that's going to get in the way of commerce. It's going to get in the way of them becoming clients. It's going to get in the way of the relationship. If I'm in a relationship with someone, I'm constantly putting obstacles in place, and I'm making it difficult for them to be around me. At some point, they're going to turn around and say, I don't want to be around you anymore. And so what we want to do is look at a system and say, is this customer focused? Does it improve the customer experience? Does it change and shift and transcend the customer's experience? Does it affect their lives in a positive way? And we want to create the system with that in mind. The second piece is that your system ought to be based on best practices. And there's no reason that we should be creating systems that are second rate. If we're going to create a system, it should be world class. And that doesn't mean that. What concerns me when I say this is that sometimes we get into this perfectionist syndrome. The perfectionist syndrome. It's a paradox because we say, well.

I'm trying to do the best. I'm trying to create the best thing for my customers, for my clients, for my team and for my business. And in the process, what happens is that we don't create anything. We simply don't move, we don't act, we don't put anything out there because it's not perfect. Well, guess what? It's never going to be perfect. So the key is that let's get the best practices that exist now and be flexible and be willing to do a version 2.0 or version 3.0, because trust me, I mess it up repeatedly and then I go, should have thought about it. I learned something. Let's shift it, let's tweak it and let's adjust it and let's make it better. That's the key. But we always want to look at it and say, what are the best practices in this area right now? What are the best tools and the things that I can do to create a world class system so I can have a world class organization, so I can have a world class relationship with my team, my vendors and my customers. And the other thing to think about is to build your systems for where you're going. In other words, I want systems that can grow with me. Now, what I'm not saying is to go and buy all kinds of stuff that you don't need, but within a range, if you're going to get a system and put a system in place that you're likely going to outgrow in six months, you probably want to do something different. But then again, I don't need you to go out and create some system that's going to last for 10 years because the business and the industry and everything's going to change too quickly. But can I put a system in place that's going to grow with me for the next, say, two to three years and then we look at it to allow for that growth. So I do want something built for where I'm going. The second is that the system needs to have a single outcome. And if we, when we look at this, and some of you have been in my trainings where I talk about prime indicators and what I want it to be is singularly focused when I create a marketing system. That marketing system is to attract a specific customer for a specific reason, for a specific product, for a specific unit. It's singularly. It's singularly focused because then we can measure it and do some things with it. So your system is typically going to have a specific outcome.

Focused on it. It's also going to have singular ownership. Again, this is something that I talk about with the prime indicators is that someone, one person, is absolutely responsible for the system for making sure that the system is being respected, for making sure that the system is working as it should, for reporting the results of that system. Now, at the beginning, it's probably going to be you, but as you grow, it's likely not going to be you on a regular basis. You're not going to own the system in the sense of doing it all the time. You're going to monitor it, you're going to keep tabs on it, you're going to get reports from it. But you're not the one that is specifically responsible over time. But at the beginning, in all likelihood, you're going to be running everything. And that's just the way it is until you start to get the cash flow and give you the latitude and the ability to put some systems in and what those systems are and we're going to get. And when you put your systems in, I'm probably going to put systems in one of two places. One is what's going to relieve the majority of your time while not giving up the core elements of value creation for your, for your business. So it's that where I'll start putting systems in first. And the other place I'll probably put systems in is in the support functions. Those that will relieve me from the details that probably aren't value creation. Things like some of the record keeping and some of the processing. If you've got physical products that you're shipping out, I'm not in there doing shipping and receiving. I'm going to have someone else do that. And I'm worried about something else or doing something else that is a higher value element. Then the other thing is that your systems need to be simple. If they're not simple, they're not going to be followed. If they're complex, convoluted, cumbersome, then they're not going to be respected, they're not going to be followed. And so what's the use in having a system that isn't going to work? The other thing is that you want it to be documented. I want to be documented because, because one, if someone gets sick and they're running that system and I need someone to step in, I've got the documentation in place in a way that.

That they, that someone can follow it. So yeah, it takes time to get things documented, but it saves you just a boatload, a boatload of aggravation, frustration and expense on the back end. If someone gets sick, decides to quit or something happens, then you have a system in place that someone can pick up and run with, or you can pick up and run with. So we want it to be simple. So they use it and they use it regularly. And we want it to be documented so anyone can pick it up and start to run with it. And then the last piece is that it needs to be measured and rewarded.

In other words, the system has to be measurable. Because if it's measurable, then we can manage the inputs, we can manage the outputs, we can manage the process. So there needs to be something that is measurable. For instance, if we're talking about productivity and we're doing an assembly line, you know, if we turn around and we, we are measuring the. Out, the output of that assembly line, they got 100 units in, this one shift out. Well, we now manage it, we can adjust the system. Now all of a sudden they got 110 units. That 10% increase makes a huge hit to the bottom line. So I need to be managing it, but I also want a reward for it. So if they went from 100 units to 110 units, their productivity went up. The system's working, the system is growing and it's allowing us to be more profitable. I want a reward for it. I want to acknowledge them for it. I want to incentivize them for running the system and doing it correctly and doing it better and better and better. And remember, it's about value creation. So if the team that's working for me is creating more and more value, then I want to give them more and more value in return. I want to take care of them. And I'm not talking about just monetary rewards. There's a whole host of ways to make sure that your team is taken care of and that they feel rewarded in that context. So when you're looking at a good system, I want to make sure it's customer focused, that we're focused on best practices, that it is focused on a single outcome and one person is responsible for running that system or responsible for making sure the system is running correctly and being respected, that it's simple and documented, and that it's measured and rewarded. And when you bring those characteristics into a system, now you've got a system that's usable, that's feasible, that's valuable, and that is going to shift and change your business, which ultimately shifts and changes your life. Because think about it, just imagine for a moment that you have some systems in place that take. That give you freedom back, that give you time back, that allow you to go and say, you know what? I got these systems in place and they're working, they're bringing in sales, they're converting.

You know, the deliveries are going out, the products are going out, customer service is being taken care of, the record keeping is taken care of. And you look at your wife or your husband, say, honey, we're taking 10 days off and we're going on a cruise and we're just going to disconnect. And it's the systems that are going to allow you to do that. So if we look at systems, what are the key systems? Now you may have others, but these are the key systems that I think we need to think about as we're growing our business. And as I said, you don't need all of these at one time to systematize them. You're going to be doing all of these functions from day one, but then we can build systems around them as we go. So if I have my business, the first system that I need to think about is my attraction system. This is a marketing system. And when we say marketing, it's not about business cards, it's not about ads. It's about a system to attract the right customers, the right clients, the right people into our sphere. So do you have, ask yourself, do you have a client attraction system? A marketing system that's really a system, a process that's being done day in, day out on a regular basis. If it is sporadic, then it's not a system. If it's sporadic, then it's a promotion at best. But what we need is a constant flow of people, of customers. We need to be constantly connected. What's your system and your process for doing that? The second system that I think we need to think about is this conversion system. When we Attract them and we get their attention. How do we convert them? How do we shift them from interested to buyer? How do we shift them from.

Got their attention to a client, to a customer, to a buyer? So do you have a conversion system in place, a way to convert them? Now it may, you may have sales reps, it may be you doing.

One on one types of calls, evaluation calls, consultative calls, those types of things. It may be meetings, it may simply be a series of emails, it may be a series of videos, it could be a lot of different things. But do you have that conversion process in place? A sales process in place? The next, I would say is your delivery. So now I've got their attention.

They've bought from me, but now I got to get it to them. These are your operating systems. What you know, is it shipping and receiving? Is it done by a fulfillment house? Do you got a. Do you have to take a physical book like this and package it up and address it and take it to the post office? I mean I have a system for this. I have a fulfillment house that when you place the order, the system kicks out the order to the fulfillment house and they take care of it for me. So I don't even see the orders coming in right away. I see the monthly reports and I keep tabs on it. But as long as the system is delivering it properly and taking care of it properly, we're okay. So attraction, conversion, delivery and then connecting. Now connecting. And it's really about a people system. Now we have the marketing system which is really with the customers. This connecting I'm talking about with my vendors and my team and as well as the customers, but mostly my vendors and my team because I need team members. That my success is not going to be a solo pursuit, it's going to be a team pursuit. It's going to. There's a lot of people. The launch of this book, to be able to get this book to become a national number one best selling book, it took a group of people. It wasn't me. I may have written it. And even the writing of it was a team effort. The marketing of it, the delivery of it, the customer service of it, all of that, it was a team. Probably a dozen or more people have been involved in that process since we launched the book. And I think that we need to realize that that's important that our, they call it in business speak, human resources. But I think the human element of business is alive. It is well and it is probably the largest thing that we can nurture and cultivate in business is our people system, is our connection system in that process. So do you have one, do you have a way to evaluate people? Do you have a way to support people? Do you have a way to nurture people? Do you have, do you have a way to coach people? Do you have a way to bring people in?

So once I have that, then the last is the tracking system. And I don't mean last in the sense that it's the least important.

I'm an accountant, so I'm going to say you got to track it right from the get go. But if I'm not tracking it, that means that I'm not measuring it. If I'm not measuring it, I can't manage it. If I'm not managing it, I can't improve it, I can't monetize it. So this is your tracking of your productivity, of your profits, of your cash flow, of all of the elements of your business. It's accounting, it's data. And it's a necessary evil in business. And I know many of the people that are probably watching this are creatives and creative types and they go, oh my God, data and accounting and columns and rows and numbers. I'm not a math person, I get it. But this is the lifeblood of your business. This is what's going to tell you whether you're healthy. And we got to get a checkup on a regular basis. We've got to check the pulse on the patient on a regular basis. We need to know what we're doing, how we're doing and why we're doing it. We need to track the numbers because the numbers don't lie. So these are the five systems that I think at a minimum you're going to need as you start to grow your business. An attraction system, a conversion system, a delivery system, a connection system and a tracking system. And when you build those systems with the six characteristics that we talked about earlier, now you've got some beautiful systems in place, you've got some great systems in place that will serve you, support you and allow you to start to give yourself more freedom to do the high value things that are meaningful in your business, to grow that business or to have a hot a larger impact on your customers, your clients and your team as you move forward. And it's going to shift the things in your life over time because this is going to allow you to remove yourself from, from some of the functions and the details so you can have the freedom and the peace of mind to do the things that you really want to do with sharing life with those that are important to you, which I think is really the ultimate, is that through business. Remember, it's about creating community, serving society and living your dreams. So let's create systems that allow you to create community, serve society, and live your dreams. So I hope you found this of value and I hope that, that you'll go out and examine some of the things that you're doing and look at things and say, are there systems that I could put in place that will leverage my time and give me some more time back to do the things that are more valuable, either emotionally, financially or otherwise? And do that and really take a hard look at it, because you'll be surprised when you start to build those systems, how cost effective it may be to put some systems in place for you to alleviate that process. So I hope you found this of value and if you did, do me a favor, share it with a friend. I'd love to get some of this information out there and expand the reach and help people create what I call these microeconomies, these micro entrepreneurs that are out there making a difference, living a life that they've designed for themselves and they're doing things their way. And if you haven't done so already, subscribe. So you make sure that you get all the tools, all the tactics, all the strategies that I have as I'm giving these things to you on a regular basis. Every week I'm releasing new episodes, new information, and I want to be your entrepreneurial mentor through the Entrepreneur Solutions Show. And this is one of the ways. And if you want to get the downloadable tool template or guidebook from any episodes for this episode, for instance, go to melabraham.com session035. You can download it if you're not. If you're not at the computer and you can't download it immediately, go ahead and text mylegacy one word, no spaces mylegacy to 38470. And if you have some questions about success, about wealth, about business, entrepreneurship, any of that, go to askmailnow.com leave me your question. We'll make sure we get it answered on one of the upcoming episodes. So I hope this serves you. I hope you go out and make a difference. I hope you go out and build it. I hope you go out and turn around and say, how do I put systems in place? And what systems should I put in place to allow me to live in a bigger way, to serve in a bigger way, and to have that bigger life that I deserve and until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode, may your vision be grand, may your journey be epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way. Because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

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