Episode 209: Designing a Business to Run Like Clockwork with Adrienne Dorison

Right Networks gets your current accounting based desktop and legacy applications into the cloud. Finally, it's easier and more secure to share sensitive documents and data with your clients. This new flexibility allows you to cost effectively grow your business and even reach new geographies. Right Networks knows your reputation is on the line, so go with a solution that is backed by Intuit. For more information, you give them a call at 888-469-5905. That's right. Networks at 888-469-59 05. And say profit first when you call them and you get 10% off. One more time. That's right, networks at 888-469-5905. And become, you know, a 2018 ER and get on the web. Hold on, there's a Burmese python.

That's what you were thinking of.

Why? Why whoever names animals, why would they. Why would they have a Burmese and a Burmese?

Maybe they talked about it.

You know who did it? It's the same guy who named New York and New Work like, right? Yeah. Oh, let's put two stays next to each other and give them almost indistinguishable phonetical pronunciations. Oh, and we'll do the same with dogs and snakes. Yeah, that's okay, Kelsey, that's your sign to kick us off.

Oh.

Welcome, everybody, to the Profit first podcast.

You're in for a special episode. We're going to talk Clockwork today. All right, guys. Hey, it's Mike McKalowitz here. I am the author of Profit first and I am also the co host for the Profit first podcast. What you're listening to today. This is the show where we discover all elements of profitability. Today's going to be a real special episode because we're talking about efficiency, organizational efficiency, specifically the Clockwork formula with my partner, Adrian Thorson. And I'm joined in studio by both Adrian and my co host, Kelsey Ayers.

Hello, everybody.

And what else did they say? Because I lost my script here. Did I say anything else?

No, that's all. But everybody, you can find us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google play, or the profitfurstpodcast.com.

Yeah, so whatever podcaster, you're listening in right now, too, whatever, just click on the old subscribe button there and get it. And if you're listening off our website, it has a list of, I think with all the links to the different podcasters where you can get it right on your smartphone or your. Your smart pad, your tablet or your laptop or whatever they put it on nowadays.

Smart Pad. Get that smart pad out.

Yeah. So. Oh, and I want. I first want to start with an icebreaker. Is that okay?

Yeah, that'd be great.

I don't know. We might have done this one, but we haven't done it with Adrian. So I want to ask what's the. The hottest? Because we're talking about weather. What's the hottest you've ever been, like, in your life? So, Adrian, are you ready for that one?

Like, a moment?

Yeah, Yeah, a moment. Like, physical heat for a moment.

Oh, my gosh. That's a really hard question. Like, you know, I'm, like, inventorying my life right now.

I'll go. Because I. I was prepared. Yeah, I'll go. You think? Kelsey, you got a thing.

I'm ready for me.

It's playing basketball. It was in New Jersey. It must. I was maybe in my early 20s. It must have been, you know, 90 degrees out with 100% humidity, you know, but it was hot. It was 95, say, degrees out, very humid. And I had a milk jug full of water, and I was like, I'm gonna play as hard as I can. I drank all that water within one game. And at the end, I was so dizzy, I almost passed out. I remember the. Just the overwhelming sense of heat. I almost had heat exhaustion. And I was so stupid. I'm like, I'm just gonna play all out in stupidly hot weather. That's my story. What's your. What's yours? Adrian?

Yeah. You made me. You made me remember mine. I was in college. I went to University of Florida, which is in Gainesville, Florida, which is a swamp. Yeah, right? Literally. And I remember it was the summer. It was like, my freshman year, and I decided to. For a run at, like, 2pm which was a horrible idea. And I remember having that, like, sensation in my body where I started to, like, get the chills, and I was like, wait, am I. I'm hot, but why am I cold? And where is water? I was like, I needed water so bad, but I was just, like, out running around campus. I finally, like, found, like, the. You. The student union and, like, ran into the water fountain, but then it was so cold in there that, like, put my body into shock. I was like, oh, no, this is bad.

Yeah.

So that was probably the hottest I've ever been with a lot of, you know, I've lived in Florida the majority of my life, so I feel like hot is my normal default.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's so many of those moments, like, at a football game where you have, like, wet Pants. Because you've been sitting. And then you just have what we call swamp ass. Yeah.

Thanks for the visuals. Really helpful.

You're welcome.

Do you go to a lot of football games? A lot of colleges?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that. I'm a huge college fan myself. Which you go to the Gators or.

Yes. So I went to University of Florida, and then I actually went to University of Georgia for grad school, which is super weird.

So when they play each other, what do you do?

You root for Florida.

Okay, well, it's still your home state, so.

Yeah.

And you're the home of Tim Tebow, if I recall correctly.

That's right. We went to school together. He was in a couple of my classes. We were there at the same time.

Wow. What's your impression of old Timmy, as I call him?

Timmy was like, one of the hardest workers I've ever seen. Wasn't. I would say. I would say, like, he. This is hopefully not an insult to Timmy, but, like, he was never, like, the smartest kid in the class, but he was always, like, the hardest working. He would show up every day. It was one of the classes that he was in with me was like a summer class, and it was 8am and he was there every single time, showed up, participated. He was a good student, huh? Nice guy. Very nice guy. Good for him.

Yeah, he, you know, he sometimes gets a bad rap because he's such a nice guy. I think people think it can't be real.

Oh, it's real.

Yeah, I think it is good, honestly. So, you know, when I said I was ready, I wasn't ready. I was singing, like, hot in general. And that was definitely when I was in Ghana in West Africa, and I was hot all the time. And you just carry a sweat rag and you're just sopping sweaty all the time. But I feel like I can't think of another time. And I know that they've happened throughout my life where I'm like, heat stroke ready. But I don't know what induced that. Besides, I feel like when I'm on the beach and I'm like, you know, you're out there for a while and you don't realize it and you get to stand up and you're like, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, yeah.

You almost fall over and you have to go to the water.

Yeah, yeah, I've been there. All right, so that's our icebreaker. We want to know for you listeners what's the hottest you've ever been. Email us and maybe we'll Read it off on air. It'd be fun. So, yeah, read it off on air. Just read it on air.

Yeah. And on that note, we do have a shout out.

Oh, lay it on me.

So this comes from Sir Stephen Wilkinson from Good and Prosper Limited in Wicklow, Ireland, bruh. He says thank you for all the hard work you have put into producing your books and your podcasts. They are all outstanding. And you are, I am sure, making a huge difference to the fortunes and well being of many entrepreneurs, myself included. So thanks, Mike.

Oh, thank you. Congratulations on your success there in Ireland. I was out. While I was touring through Ireland, I went to Killarney, which is in Cork County. That's not my favorite city, but I also visited Dublin, the Dingle Peninsula. Saw the Cliffs of Moore. I kissed the Blarney Rock.

I saw that.

Me kiss the Blarney Rock. It was. Does it sound Irish at all?

Yes. Say it all the time.

They're magically delicious. I'll tell you, the most wonderful people I've met, and I thought India was number one. Now I'm thinking maybe Ireland. It's different, though. It's different cultures. But two in a row, the most warm people in got off the plane and they're like, welcome to Ireland. And people are driving us around, you know, taxi cab driver's like, oh, this is where I grew up. And he's just sharing stuff. Not because he's like, bragging, just. It's just like your family.

Yeah. I feel that for Scotland and Ireland both. I think coming from the U.S. it's nice because they're so friendly, but also have such great senses of humor that no question, like, it's always fun. It's such a fun experience, but you always feel like you're amongst family.

We met some Scottish people. Yeah.

I was gonna say, do you think that also has to do with, like, English speaking? That it's, like, helpful that it's. They can communicate more easily?

Probably.

Right, yeah.

Yeah.

Scottish people were a little more gruff and just how they're, hey, welcome to Scotland. They're just a little, like. It's a little more intense. There's a little energy. The Irish people were a little softer, but like you said, it's true. Everyone was warm and friendly and fun and, yeah. Laugh out loud. Funny.

Yeah.

Here was the last little story. We go to a pub for dinner. We. We walk in and, you know, the pub had maybe 10 tables, you know, but you have to go to a pub to eat dinner. That's. That's their restaurants. There is nothing else. And everyone's drinking at the tables. And we walk in and we're like, oh, we're here for table. And they're like, oh, we're sorry. We don't know how long it's going to be, the wait. And we're like, oh, we should leave. One table raised their hands. They say, hey, over here. We're like, yeah, take our table. And they got up and they said, we'll stand at the bar. Just, my gosh, I know. We're Americans. Are you sure? And you're like, yeah, welcome. We had no idea. We thought you were Irish. They almost took the table back.

They're like, me, Irish.

Sit here.

Me Irish. That's what I said. I tried to use Irish accent. All right, so last things before we get into the show. I want to thank our corporate partners. Thanks, Diva and Receipt Bank. We'll share more about them. And then I want to do a formal introduction of Adrian Dorsen. Adrian is a consultant, podcast host, and the founder of Good Business Do Good, who helps good businesses get more profitable so they can give back to the world in bigger ways. Well, she and I partnered up, and she is the exclusive licensee of Clockwork. So, dear listeners, put your ear closer to the speaker. Get a little closer because I want you to hear this. Closer. Nope, nope. A little bit closer. That's it. There. I whipped you into shape. Here's the deal. Now that I'm trying to get your listeners attention.

It's a horrible execution.

It was horrible. Usually it's very funny. That was a really bad one. But I want to get your attention, listener. Once you pick up the Clockwork book, there is one company, one period on the entire globe. It's called Run Like Clockwork. And the owner of that company is Adrian Dorsen, who consults businesses in implementing the Clockwork system. If you want to design your business, run yourself. It's Adrienne Dorsen who does it, and that's why she's here today. One last thing some of you may not know about Adrienne. She was a Level 1 safari guide back in 2008 while living in South Africa. All right, Adrian, now it's official. Welcome to the show.

Wow. Thank you. That was quite the intro, even with the. The whip.

Yeah, that was. Yeah. Usually it's kind of funny and, like, it's a big buildup, but that kind of fell short. How does someone go from a safari guard, guard.

Safari guard, safari guard.

All right, we're gonna. That means I've learned Just to go with it. So let's talk about your safari guarding days.

Yeah.

How did you go from being a safari guard to what you do today? It seems like such a disconnect.

I know. So my background, degree from undergrad is actually in wildlife ecology and conservation, which we've spoken about before. But that was part of one of my undergrad study abroad opportunities. I went and studied international wildlife management and I lived in South Africa. And while I was there, part of my program was to study and train as a safari guide guard, as you put it.

Yeah.

And then from there I also got an advanced degree in forestry and natural resources in the statistics and economics side of things. So I was looking at natural resource markets. So you know, when you think of like the stock market, there's also markets for natural resource products. And from there I got hired into a Fortune 500 manufacturing company which is in the pulp and paper industry industry. So I was entered into the natural resource world, but on the business side of things. And that's where I got all of my operational efficiency training. And they, they what they ended up doing. When I got that job, I thought I was going to end up more, you know, working on the forest side. But what ended up happening was I worked more on the business side of things and got to apply a lot of the operational knowledge to a natural resource supply chain.

So, so your background though is these large corporations doing operational efficiency. You know, the people that you're now serving are small business. It seems so intimidating for a small business to even consider operational efficiency. That's a big business game, isn't it?

Well, it's not a big business game. I think it's something that every business has and can achieve is, is looking at their operation and understanding how it can be even more efficient. But there are concepts that may not necessarily apply to businesses. Which is basically the last four years of me consulting and doing, you know, running my own business, has been looking at those systems and understanding, okay, how do we apply some of these concepts that the big business world is using to get lean and get efficient and save money and use less resources? How can we apply those to small business owners who absolutely need these tools? Because your resources are probably more limited than anyone's actually. So I think that it's a super important concept, concepts, but sometimes it doesn't get the acknowledgement that it needs because it's not super sexy or fun to talk about. I think people would much more like, you know, they'd be more excited to talk about maybe their marketing efforts Right. And this, that is probably one part of your operation, but this is where you can actually grow and scale a company way more effectively and, and more profitably is by understanding your operation and your team and, and how to be super efficient in all of those processes.

You said resources, and I think that ties directly to operational efficiency. But I want to know, how do you define operational efficiency? What does it mean and does it correlate to your use of resources?

Yes. So I would define operational efficiency from the, you know, from a super simple, super simple definition of being using the least amount of resources to get the most amount of results. Right. So how can we look at our company in general and look at the operation and how it's running and there's a bunch of pieces involved probably in your operation, but how can we use the least amount of resources, whether those resources be time, energy, effort, skills, information, people, and get the most amount of results? So I think that oftentimes efficiency is confused with productivity, but these are not the same thing. And we're looking at achieving super high quality results with the least amount of resource use. So I talk about the idea of like being in waste management. Like I want to reduce the waste inside of your system and that means resource waste.

So how's that different? You said efficiency and productivity is different. How is that different than productivity?

So productivity is all about getting more and more done and that's not necessarily our goal or our focus as it relates to efficiency. I might actually tell you to do less, but it will produce a higher result.

Gotcha. And getting more done if you're, you can be very productive doing the wrong things too. Right?

Right. Which is true for most people. Right. We, we think about how can we do more, how can we get more done, get more done, get more done. That is preached in our society over and over again, when in actuality I want to be looking for how can we actually do the least amount? It's like intentional laziness, right? Like how can we do the least amount of work but get the most amount of results? And that would be efficiency.

I heard someone, I'm going to bastardize this story, but basically I think it was Bill Gates, but it was some famous entrepreneur who said, I want to hire the laziest person I can find to do something because they're going to find a way to automate it. If I find the person that's the most hustle oriented, they're just going to carry the weight on their own and then the day they leave, the entire system collapses again.

Yeah.

I don't know if you've heard that.

I actually have not heard that. But it's true.

Yeah, I mean, but I mean you're not. But lazy is a bad connotation too. Lazy means I'm just looking to avoid work. We're talking about operational efficiency. Efficiency. It looks like you're redirecting your energies toward a different type of work.

Yes. So if you can come up with a different terminology for that laziness, that would be great. But that's, that's sometimes how I describe it to people because yeah, I don't necessarily want people to feel like they need to do more and more and more. They're already doing a lot. Right. That's usually not the problem. When people come to me, it's not that they're unwilling to do the work, it's that we have to really understand what are the things inside your business, inside that operation that are going to make the largest impact, get you the largest amount of results, the highest quality of results, but allow you to do the least. And that is a really valuable skill set. Like, like Bill Gates said, I thought.

Gates, I hope I'm properly.

Yeah. If he said that, if he said.

If I wasn't, it was probably my dad, but you know, whatever. So as I was researching for Clockwork, one thing that surprised me was how many people are willing to do the work. Entrepreneurs and Hustle. Because it's actually easier than thinking about how to do the work. Does that resonate with you?

So they're willing to work harder. Right. Grind it out, identify how they could maybe be more efficient.

Yes. And the reason was it's almost subconscious. They were saying, I just know what, I know what I'm doing, I can do. I call it the I can syndrome. I can do it. And so therefore.

So I'm sure there's a little bit of ego there too. Right. Like making sure that like they are necessary inside the business. It strokes their ego self soothing. I think I find a lot of my CEOs and entrepreneurs, companies that I work with, when we start to remove a lot from their plate, it makes them very uncomfortable. Right. Like there is a sort of element of self soothing that they've created in their lives through doing more work. Right. Through just doing more things, even if they don't actually need to do those things. And I've experienced that firsthand as well with we went down to like a five hour workday and you know, going from maybe even an 8 or a 10 hour workday sometimes down to a 5 hour workday. Of course there's always going to be more things to do as an entrepreneur, but it's to maximize our efficiency. You know, using constraint theory. If I have five hours a day, well, then I found myself at like 2pm I was like, I should go do more work. Right? I know how to go do more things. There are things I could go do. And I was like, but is that really long term, sustainability wise, quality of life? Is that really what I want and is it in service of the growth of the business long term? No. So I had to, you know, kind of look at my own ego, where that was getting involved. And it's also much like they know how to grind it out. They know how to do more work. The problem is that is what got them to the point where they are now. But that will not, they will not be able to 10x their hours to 10x the growth of their company. So at some point they will reach an area of growth where they cannot grow anymore by doing more work themselves. You know, like that does end at some point, even though it's gotten them to where they are now.

That's the irony because I think it manifests, manifests in frustration. They, they, I work harder and harder and I see progress because in the beginning it's just me, of course there's gonna be progress. I'm starting off with a $0 business. I see the growth and so I inevitably hear this like, hey, my business went from zero to a hundred thousand. We doubled in revenue. We want to keep this going. We're doing 200. Next year they may do four. And I look at this now, we're gonna do eight and then 10. We're gonna be a billion dollar company in three years. Because they just see that their effort, if it stays in this linear path, that there's an exponential result. But that's only in the beginning. Right. There's a certain point where you can't linearly grow anymore. But that also requires you to totally unwind what you've been doing in the past and start a whole new method. How do entrepreneurs, Adrian, break through that path of staying, you know, with the familiar?

Yeah. So I think that's, it's a process. Right. And understanding first of all, like how what I call like interwoven or basket woven into every part of the business you are is the first step that we always want to look at because a lot of times they do need to restructure or they do need to, you know, understand, okay, this is what got us here. More and more work, which involved me being involved in every single process or every single department or every single system. Or maybe there is no system or process. I just know it in my head, which doesn't help. If you're really trying to create growth and if you're trying to scale or if you're trying to reclaim some of your own life back. Right. As people start to grow teams, they sometimes end up doing. I hear this a lot, like, oh, I hired a team. I thought I going to help. I thought I was going to get more of my time back. What it ended up doing is putting even more work on my plate. Yeah, that happens, right? If we can't unwind or unravel ourselves from that basket weave of how we've integrated ourselves into every part of the business. And this happens a lot with people who are the solopreneur at first, and then they grow and then they double and then they add a team member. But they're still involved in everything. So we have to understand what, where, where all of your time is actually going. And so we do some time tracking both of the, you know, the owner, the CEO, whoever is running that company, as well as any other team members that they have. We want to really take a good, what I call like the current state of the union. Like, I need to know where we're at right now in terms of your time, where is your time going, where is your energy going? And from there, we can start to unwind you from every single piece of that business that you don't actually need to be directly involved in or doing a lot of those things in order to grow and scale the business. Right. Like there are certain things that you're still doing or you're still involved in, or you're still reviewing or you're still making approvals on, or you're still making decisions around that you don't really need to be involved with. And that is also where the ego conversation comes in or the control conversation comes in, where we have to identify, like, where you think you need to be making decisions around things when in actuality your team is totally capable of doing those things. Or we can set up systems and tools inside your business so that the team can make the decisions that maybe you would make, but they can do that without you. And that's super important if you're really trying to scale the business or maybe grow another business. I know that there's a lot of entrepreneurs who don't want to have just this one business, but they have no time to Start the next one or the next project or even to devote to the things that they say are their zone of genius inside of that business. Right. Like if, if you are the highest paid or the highest value person to the company, you need to make sure that that is where your time is being spent. It's the only way that it's going to grow. So looking at where you're spending your time now and starting to unravel, that I think is step number one.

And I wanted now to make a shift to talk about a concept we have in the book about picking the one thing to fix in your business or the next thing to fix in your business. And just so our listeners know. And Kelsey, you know, you know, when it comes to being an author, it's not like I just start writing. I have to interview. And when I found Adrian, I was like, oh my God, I found the resource of the century. I think Adrian interviewed you maybe five or so independent times. A couple times at bars, once in an elevator, once while I'm at a funeral. True story. And a couple, couple times here at the office and. But it wasn't during the funeral, by the way. I arrived like 15 minutes early. I seen the parking lot.

It was in the parking lot.

Yeah, I was in the parking lot. One thing that happened in the elevator moment where we were meeting, it was a group of entrepreneurs that were getting together for a gathering. I pulled you aside and started drilling with questions and you revealed this model. I subsequently added a little componentry to it. You and I have tackled it and played with it a lot. Now it's called the acdc and that stands for attracting customers or prospects, converting them into customers, delivering the service or product to them and then collecting the funds. And it seems that at in any business, one of these elements is going to be their weakest link currently. And that's the thing that needs to be fixed first before they go to the next thing. Could you kind of build on this AC DC model, tell us more about each step and then how do we, how do we find the next thing to fix in our business? Using this?

Yeah, yeah. So I use this tool as sort of a framework to help people when they're doing their goal setting or when they're identifying what projects they should really be executing on their team. So I usually recommend people do like 90 day goal setting, but you can use this at any point in your business when you're trying to identify like where should we be spending the majority of our time? The majority of our effort, the majority of our team. So when you're picking projects, when you're picking goals, you want to identify which one of these is actually what I call bottlenecking or like stunting your growth, right? If you're in a phase of growth, you're trying to experience more growth, one of these things is likely the problem area, and that's the one that you should attack. That's the one that you should focus the majority of your resources on as the highest priority before going to the next one or distracting yourself elsewhere. And this is a super helpful filter as you go through your days, as you go through your weeks, and you're working on things like making sure that they really relate to that specific bottleneck. So we have the AC dc, which is our acronym now. So the first one is attract, right? And this is all about lead generation. Like, do you have enough leads coming into the business to hit your revenue goals? And if not, that's probably the bottleneck or the, you know, the, the weakest link that you need to be focused on. Now if you say, yep, we've got enough leads coming in, but we're not growing the way that we want to, okay, now we can move down the line. Is it that you're not converting them so that A and then C, right. AC DC So converting. Are you converting those leads into sales at an average or above average rate through whatever sales. What I call your sales vehicle, your sales mechanism, that's going to be different for typically, every single business has a different type of sales vehicle or mechanism or a way that they're converting people into customers. Your industries, like your average is going to range. So you should do some research in your own industry. And you know, the sales vehicle, for example, could be like in the online business space or something. It might be a webinar, it might be an email, it might be like if you have a brick and mortar, it might be an in person, someone walks in your front door, like that conversation, it might be a sales call, right? So what is the. And if you can't find average, you know, statistics on these things, you could just identify like what would be your goal for sales conversions in, in this specific sales vehicle that you're using? And if you're not hitting average or above average, that's probably your bottleneck, right? If you've got enough leads coming in, but you're not converting them into customers, then that's where you need to focus all eyes, all resources on how do we improve the conversion rate since we're getting the leads in, right? So if that's working well for you, if you're like, yep, we got the leads coming in, we've got the sales converting, like if we bring in leads, we know how to convert them. Beautiful. So the next thing might be your delivery, right? Like are you delivering your product or your service with high quality to the end consumer and do you have enough capacity in that delivery to deliver more? So here's an example of that. I've had a customer working with me, a client that had worked with me where she, she was getting tons of leads, she was converting tons of sales and she was actually having to turn people away because she couldn't deliver, she couldn't, she didn't have enough time or energy to deliver more product. And that can happen with a product or a service, right? So in that case, we want to focus on the delivery aspect of your bottleneck so that you can open up more capacity for additional customers or clients to now work with you. So for example, if you're in the service based type of space and you're working one on one with people and now you're fully booked, now you might want to figure out, okay, I'm fully booked in my one on one, I've got the leads coming in, I can convert them into sales, but I need to open up more capacity. Then and only then do you open up more capacity with a group program or a digital product or you know, a course or something like that, right. Or different ways. Maybe you hire someone agency style and you, you have additional people to serve your end customers. But the next phase is that collecting funds. Now I think that this one actually affects people at all stages in terms of actually being able to solve their other problems, right? So if you have no cash flow in the business or you're working with people, but you're not actually collecting money and you're unable to continue to run the business, that could be very challenging because you also might identify, oh, I know what my, I know what problem we need to fix, we just don't have the funds to solve it. And that can put you in this endless like, like cyclical loop or stress factor of we can't grow the business because we don't have enough money to grow the business. And then you're back to square one, right? So that collecting of funds or having the cash flow in the business is something that is super important to maintain and make sure is available for you. Because one of the other things that people, my clients come to me for is either they're trying to scale and they don't know, you know, how to do that really effectively in terms of their operation, or this might be like mind boggling for people. But they're scaling too quickly, right? They're scaling so fast, their company is growing so fast that they are at risk operationally and cash flow wise to actually ruin the company, right? So we have to look at that and get those things organized. And they see that, oh my gosh, if we grow so quickly operationally, we're not going to be able to service our customers the way that we want to. And that is, can be detrimental to a business, right? So when you're looking at these things, you want to make sure that you identify which one of those is my current bottleneck. Because what happens is most people end up either focusing on multiples of these at the same time, which is not a good use of your resources, solve, solve the main one, the main bottleneck, the root cause of your problem before you move on, or they end up solving the wrong one. And that usually happens because of a resistance to the thing that actually needs to be solved. So for example, a lot of people end up opening up more capacity, right? Like they'll open up more delivery channels or if you're in the product space, you'll add more SKUs, when in actuality you haven't really maxed the capacity on your current product or your current service. And what you really need to do is focus on lead gen, right? Like maybe you really need to focus on that a, or that attraction phase, but that might be the harder or more uncomfortable thing for you to do. Or it might be the thing that you just can't figure out. I see this happen all the time. People are like, they create a product, then they're like, oh, they tried to launch it, didn't work as well as they wanted. So what they do, maybe they wanted something else. I'm going to go back to the creation cave and go create this other product. Like, but is that really the problem or did we not get enough leads coming in to really understand if that product was what they wanted or what they didn't? Like now your work, your project, your resources need to be devoted to, to lead generation or to that attraction phase and figuring out how do we attract customers to our product, right? So I think that sometimes people solve the wrong problem out of fear or resistance of what it's going to take to solve the right one. But that's going to be a way better use of your resources.

So, you know, once you shared this model with Me and. And we started playing with it. I started rolling it out with people and testing it it. I even found that the AC dc we were talking about the cash or the collection component that can play out at any time. I found the D moved to the delivery. And here's the example. I ran a test of it against 99designs. 99designs is a company, actually. We're looking to use them to do some design work. They will do it, what's called on spec, which means we put a request out. That's the attraction phase, where a prospect, right, saying, hey, we're looking to get this graphic made. People will actually make the entire graphic, meaning they deliver the end product before they have the customer in, hoping to win the business by delivering the final product. That's called spec work or on spec, where you're. Now you're doing a D, C, C, you're attracting prospects. You have a prospect in the door you deliver the goods in, hoping that they'll become a customer. Very risky. Because they don't become a customer. You spend all that time. But sometimes that's just how the business model works and you have to do it. So I just encourage people. You may not fall into the perfect AC dc. You may be a ca, DC or whatever. It may flop around. But yet once you know your flow, then it becomes very obvious, I think, where these problems are. The second thing I found, Adrian, I want to get your feedback on this is those industry averages. As I was talking to entrepreneurs, I said, I have no idea what my industry averages. My competition won't talk me and I won't talk to them. But I found you can often find a parallel outside your industry. So, for example, say I have a gas station. I can't go to another gas station. Say, hey, how many of your customers you know? How often does someone fill up and what kind of revenues are you doing? It's unlikely the guy across the street will tell me that, but the propane shop that's. That's filling up propane tanks may. And while that's not a fuel for cars necessarily, it may give you some indication for fuel demand. And I found that those people, you can often form collaboratives, a mastermind, and you'll be willing to share information because they're not a competitive threat and they'll share with you. And you can kind of get some base averages from that. What's your feeling around that or experience?

Yeah, I would say that looking at other industries that are, you know, sister sister type of industries or ones that are related to yours or that build off of your super, super helpful information, especially if those people are open to sharing information. Also, if I've found that some of my local brick and mortars, people that run local businesses, you can go, you know, research another like or even multiple other regions or areas and you're no longer competition for those people and they usually will be likely to share and if you can cross pollinate and share information with them, even though it will be different, which is why I suggest you get, you know, a few different people from a few different areas that might be similar to yours, but you could at least get an idea of that. And just knowing like how your own business and like what's working for you and what's not. For example, like if you know that you're expecting a certain percent or a certain conversion rate on a sales call and you're not getting that, then looking at those individual things inside of your business and you can look at past data to know what is average for us, what is acceptable for us and industry. You know, numbers are great, but knowing your own past data is super helpful as well.

So I think one of the most widely received new concepts that's in klocwork is the concept of the qbr, the queen bee role. And just a summary of what this is, Kelsey, is every business, we argue, has a component that it hinges its success on. It's the defining component of the company. It's with a company's success is necessitated by. And the, the reason it says queen B roll or why we called it that, is that when I was studying beehives, I found that beehives have a queen bee. And the queen bee serves the most critical role for supporting that hive, which is laying eggs. And if she's failing to serve that role, the entire hive gets wiped out. So everyone knows that that function of laying eggs is the most important. The queen bee herself, by the way, is not the most critical bee. They all serve their roles and she just happens to be serving the role of laying eggs. So they protect and defend her. But if she's failing to serve that, they'll actually remove her and spawn a new queen bee. I believe, Adrian, every business has a queen bee role. Could you tell us how this applies in the business world and maybe how our listeners can leverage that for themselves?

Yeah, so this is one that I think is like super important for everyone to understand, like what is their queen bee role for their company and then how are the team members, you know, supporting that queen bee role. But we want to make it super clear that this is not like an individual, right? We say the word role because it's not one person. It's not me as the CEO, the individual, but rather the role that the company is, is playing. And I think the examples are one of the most helpful things for people to understand. And so I was telling you that the gym that I go to here in St. Pete meet, I was working with them on identifying what that queen bee role was. And one way that you can start to figure this out is actually there is an exercise in the book that you can go through, which we are gonna obviously recommend that you do. But another way that I've found super helpful for my clients to start understanding this and getting a really good grasp of it is asking their customers as well, like, what is the reason that you choose us over everyone else? Or what is the thing that makes this place different than any place else, even though you have these other options, right? So it was very easy for me to do it for my gym. And so you could even pick an example of another business that maybe you frequent and do it, do this exercise super, super. Simply, it's not the full exercise that goes on in the book, but thinking about, like, why do you choose that place over anything else? And usually it's. It doesn't always have to do with the product or service that they're selling, right? Which is. Is very interesting. Like, that's not the differential that makes you choose it over the other places that absolutely could give you that same product or service. So all things being equal in terms of product and service, why do you choose that place? And so for my gym specifically, it was very easy. Like, it was super easy for me to tell them, like, your queen bee role, your qbr. The thing that this company, like, hinges on is the community aspect, right? There's tons of other gyms within a mile radius of the gym that I go to. I was telling you that we moved and I. I ended up having to drive even further to. To keep going to this gym. But I still do it. Their equipment average, right? Like, nice equipment. But there's definitely gyms in the area with nicer equipment. There's no, like, bodybuilders or super, you know, competitive athletes at our gym. So it's not that I'm going to become the best competitive athlete there. It's literally the thing that people go back for. The people that move away from town and they still come back to say, you know what, I moved to Chicago and I still can't find a Community like this one. And so that is their qbr. That is the thing that is so important that they understand how to replicate that, how to, how to maintain that, how to make sure that whatever else, whatever other growth projects that they're working on, they can't lose sight of that. Right. Like if they lose sight of that, nothing else matters. None of the other growth strategies matter, none of the other scalability matters. And so in this example, they're opening up a second location. And so this was so important for us to know. This was so important because it's not just about let's open up a building and put some gym equipment in there and it'll work. It won't. Right. Like we have to be able to replicate that qbr. We have to be able to replicate that community aspect for them. Otherwise it's not going to work the same way. Right. And so identifying that for your business, even when it's not the specific product or service that you sell, is super important because then you can frame all of your resources, your projects, your team members to make sure that they understand this and that they are focused on this as well. Because you don't want to lose that and you don't want to not identify that at all because you might actually wipe it out of your business altogether if you're not very clear that that's the thing.

Yeah. And what was interesting is it the QBR is self defined. It's not like if you own a gym, you have to have a great community.

Right.

You could own a gym, you have great community. But what was that gym called? Curves for Women. What was so fascinating was they said we're going to cater to women. And what, what women want is they don't want those fit athletes in there. So they had all the gym equipment face the wall so you don't have to see other people working out and no mirrors. And it was all about removing that comparative component which actually gyms want to show that the gyms I go to, the guys are flexing in front. It's usually me flexing in front of the mirror. There's another book that just came out recently called Power of Moments by Dan Heath and Chip here. Fabulous, fabulous book. We're actually reading as a book study in our organization. And they shared this hotel down near Disneyland. It's not a Disney hotel, it's called Magic Hotel, I think. Was it called Magic Hotel?

Yes.

Yeah. And what they do is they said it's kind of a throwback to the 70s, like most of Disney, quite frankly. In my opinion now. But it's a throwback to the 70s. It's actually a little bit run down. But this place is packed and it gets five star ratings consistently. And the reason is the small, different experiential moments. And one example is near the pool, they have a red phone sitting there. And if you pick up the phone, someone answers immediately and says, what's your popsicle emergency? And what it is is a hot popsicle hotline or cold popsicle hotline. You pick it up. Yeah, hot popsicle.

Yeah, they invented a hot popsicle. That's what makes it special.

Easy, moron. It's amazing. Amazing. It's a hotline for popsicles and someone comes out with, on a silver platter, white gloves, a popsicle of your choice and rushes it to your lounge chair. And it's such a remarkable moment that this hotel that's average in all other regards has two or three remarkable things that are so noteworthy. That's their qbr. What few things can we do that are so extraordinary and noteworthy? People come running back, all right, we gotta get going. I'm looking at the clock now. But Adrian, we formed a company around this. Yes, we did Run Like Clockwork. The book Clockwork. I know many people are going to read it and hopefully implement in their business. Some readers are going to say, I need to take this next step. I need a professional come in and help me with it. And I met you as like, you got to be, you got to do this. And it took us a good year of studying and planning it. And then we said, we're all in on this together. Could you tell us about Run Like Clockwork and where can our listeners get started working with your company that's the exclusive supporter and service provider for Klokwork?

Yes. So read the book. I love your books because they are very actionable. So if you, like Mike said, if you read the book and you're like, I can do this, then great, go do it. If you're looking for the additional support and implementation on this process, we would love to support you on that. So we run workshops to help you do that and can help you implement the Clockwork systems and frameworks and tools inside of your business, all to design a business that runs itself. We want to help you be able to step away from the business for an entire month and not just have it run without you, but we want it to grow without you being in there. And that is possible. So if you are interested in working together, if you're interested in having that support to take the book a step further, you can go to runlike clockwork.com and all the information is there. You can sign up for a workshop, you can send me a message and we'd love to meet you.

Awesome. And by the time this broadcast, which is in July, we've done. You've done a beta workshop training on this. I've been there. Now you're going to start doing classes on a regular basis. If someone wants to sign up for a Run like Clockwork class.

Yep.

Can they also do it through Run like. Yes.

Go to the website and there's information on when our next classes and workshops will be on the services tab. So go to runlikeclockwork.com forward/services. Or just go to runlike clockwork.com you'll find it. I believe in you. And, and there will be. We're always going to have the next two dates available on the website, so you can go and check that out.

Perfect. So classes, training, all the support is there for you with who I believe is the leading expert in our country on small business efficiency.

Soon the world, hopefully. Right?

Soon the world, yeah. Actually in the world, I should say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, who else would it be? So, Adrian, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you, Adrian. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Yeah, it was awesome. All right. Hey, we gotta get going. We're almost out of time here. So I just want to do a couple wrap up things. Things. All we're gonna do is thank our corporate partners and then we'll tell people where to learn about us and Because I think our summary was kind of built into that episode. Yeah. Okay, cool. Here's a little punch. Oh, I like how you do the face. Ow. I want to thank Fundbox. No, I don't.

Yes, I do.

Yes, I do.

No, no you don't.

No, I don't. No, I don't.

Nextiva.

You want to thank nextiva. I want to thank nextiva. That's the one who sponsors this. Nextiva is a voiceover IP phone system. They're extraordinarily efficient business. They've scaled now to over a thousand employees, but they're one of the fastest scaling companies. Their founder, Thomas Gorney is in Inc. Magazine today or yesterday a major article about how he became a billionaire. He's now a personal billionaire through scaling his business efficiently by outsourcing certain components. But actually in housing the most important elements, which was customer service, most companies outsourced that. Yeah, they in housed it and made extremely efficient and now they're world famous for their customer service. Why don't you experience their customer service, use their phone systems? It's nextiva.com. we've been using them since the inception of this company and well before, and we're going to use them forever. They are that good, that exceptional. The other company that's our supporter is not Fundbox. It's Receipt Bank.

Yes, that's right there.

I got it nailed down now. And Receipt bank is your single point of entry for all those receipts you have. Carry your phone with you, have it with you all the time. Anyway, just scan a receipt. It links up to your accounting system. All the stuff reconciles for you. It's receipts on automatic. Whoo. That makes it easy. All right, Kelsey, we are rock and roll and get out of here. What can people do?

Well, don't forget to leave us ratings and Comments on Profit first podcast, podcast.com or iTunes, Stitcher, Tunein radio, any podcast or anywhere.

Or you could be like a real stalker and just go one by one, right? You go to itunes.

That's totally fine.

Five star. Tune in. Five star. Our own website, which doesn't give you an ability to do rankings. Five star. Anyway, put the comments like, you can just go crazy and be a binger, right? Yeah, I binge television shows. I don't watch much TV at all until it became Breaking Bad. I was like, oh, my God, I've been like four episodes a day. And you kind of start losing, like, the sense of reality, but it's so engaging. I have talked to many bingers at the Prop first podcast, and they say, listen, I. I get packed with so much information, I'm kind of in a daze afterwards. But the next day, I'm implementing stuff my business. Game changer, become a binger. Yeah. All right. Oh, oh, one more thing. Go to run like clockwork dot com. Yeah, go to runlikeclockwork.com right now. That's the final call to action. It is a game changer for your business. You have the responsibility to once and for all design your business to run itself. And that's what Run Like Clockwork does. All right, catch you all later.

Bye, everybody.

Sam.