How to Remove What’s Blocking Your Success | Systems, Bottlenecks and “Enough”

Welcome to another pop-up edition of Creative on Purpose Live. Creative on Purpose is dedicated to helping people like you that are purpose-driven, that are looking to make a better living by making a bigger difference doing work that matters with people you care about, do so with greater ease and velocity. I'm Scott Perry. I'm the publisher of Creative on Purpose, under which I release content through Transcendent Solopreneurship and The Art of Encore Living and under the Creative On Purpose brand itself. And today we are going to talk about how to identify and navigate what's in the way of your success in life or business. So we're going to begin with a fundamental principle about success, and that is any goal that you are trying to achieve, whether that's a revenue number in your business or carving out time for your, your passions or, or hobbies in your life. It's a matter of thinking in and optimizing systems. So we're talking about system liability and we need to talk a little bit first about how do systems work. So a system is going to be designed with some sort of intent. It has some sort of goal or aspiration that it's trying to accomplish, or maybe it's a problem that you're trying to solve and it is going to be as effective effective and as efficient as all the components of that system. Most systems are fairly complex, and the reliability of any system, the efficiency of that system, is a product of the reliability and efficiency of all of the component parts. So just to give you a really kind of simple everyday, uh, example, if we are talking about turning the lights on as a goal of a system that is made up of a light switch and the internal wiring of the house and the, the wiring and the, the mechanisms in the light and the light bulb. What we're talking about is a system that involves flicking a switch, having electricity run through the wires and into the light device and making sure that there is a working light bulb. And if all the components of the system are working properly, flicking the switch will result in a light bulb being turned on. So that's a fairly dependable system. It's a fairly reliable system. Probably 98% of the time that we flick a switch, a light goes on because the light switch works. The wiring in the house is good, the light is plugged in, the light bulb is still a working light bulb, and we remember to pay our electricity bill. And so we create a fairly reliable system just by making sure that the reliability of all the component parts is good. Most of the systems that we build for our life and for our business don't have that level of reliability. So just going back to the light bulb example, if 90% of the time the light switch works and 90% of the time the wiring is good and 90% of the time the light is plugged in and the light bulb is good, the efficiency of that system is not 90% because it's not the average of the components of the system. It's the product of the reliability of the components of the system. So, 90% of the time the light switch works and 90% of the time the light is plugged in, that's an 81% reliability. And then, if 90% of the time the light bulb works, that's actually less than or a little over 72% or— I'm sorry, maybe it's a little less than 72%. But, if we were If we multiply 0.9 times 0.9, that's 81 times 0.9 is 7 point or 0.72 some odd percent. And so we can see that if we add more components to that system, the system gets increasingly unreliable. Even if the reliability of each thing that we add is 90% or higher, nothing is 100% reliable. No component, no system is 100% reliable. So when we're talking about our business and life systems, the reliability is going to be much less because there's more complexity and the reliability of each of those components that make up that complexity is going to be a reasonably small number. That's how systems work. A system is only reliable as the product of the efficiency of each of the component parts, the product of the reliability of each of the component parts. So how do we identify and navigate the things that are impeding our success with these life and business systems? Well, the first thing that we have to talk about is we have to understand that a system is designed to achieve a goal. And if that goal is unclear or vague or misinformed or misdirected, then one of the things that we can do to immediately boost the overall efficiency and effectiveness of that system is to get clear about what it is we're trying to get closer to. What's the goal of the system? What's the outcome that we're trying to accomplish? We have to have clarity of what the output is, what the destination is. In life and business systems, oftentimes in the, the work that I'm doing with community members here in the Circle community— Emma is one of our members— I think I'm actually as an Inner Circle member and with my clients, some of whom were just on a call with me earlier today. What often happens is we come in with the goal as I want more money or I need more time. And those are not clear goals. More is chasing after more is actually a surefire way to get further away from what we want and to never accomplish what we want because we haven't defined it specifically. A goal needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. How much money are you trying to accomplish or earn? How much time do you need? More importantly, what are you doing when you achieve this revenue goal or when you accomplish setting aside this amount of time for whatever it is that you want to do? What? What is the, the result, the impact on your life? How does it enhance, inform, and inspire more abundance or fulfillment in your life? That's the actual goal. The money or the time may be a means to the goal, but it's not usually a very good end or means in and of itself. So clarity of destination, clarity of outcome. That's the first thing that you can do. To start building better systems, systems that will help you collapse time to target between, between where you are and where you want to be. The second thing that you need to do is understand that you have to identify the most immediate bottleneck. And I'm using the word bottleneck instead of constraint on purpose. Most of the people that are tuning into this, either here live or in replay, we are solopreneurs, independent entrepreneurs. We are one-person businesses and we all share the same constraints. There's 24 hours in a day. There's only, there's a finite amount of time, attention that we can invest. In our business at any given time, on any given day. There's only so much working capital that we have to invest in developing and optimizing our business systems. There's only so much energy that we can bring into our business on any given day. Those are constraints. There's a finite amount of time, attention, money, and effort available to us. As solopreneurs. Those are not bottlenecks. Those are constraints. A bottleneck is something that is impeding your ability to get closer to what it is that you want. And you want to identify the most immediate bottleneck because there's going to be a series of bottlenecks. But by addressing the most immediate bottleneck, you are automatically increasing flow. So if you think of your system as a hose that's attached to a faucet that you're turning to create, to invest resources to go through a hose that's going to fill a bucket, but the hose is full of a bunch of kinks. What we want to do is address the most immediate kink in the hose because by doing that, we automatically increase the flow of those resources. Which will help reveal and identify the next most immediate kink in the hose. It may actually solve kinks in the hose that are down the hose by taking care of the most important thing, the most immediate thing right now. Optimizing your business systems is all about doing the right thing at the right time in the right sequence, identifying the next most immediate constraint or bottleneck, turning that into your most immediate business priority, and then crafting your plan to successfully navigate through or solve that most immediate bottleneck. So you have to know what the, what the goal is, what the bucket is that you're trying to fill. You have to identify the system, the hose, you have to Be aware of the resources that you actually have to invest— time, attention, money, and effort— and you have to be able to identify the most next, most immediate bottleneck, the next kink in the hose. And one of the other things that this brings to mind as a necessity when it comes to identifying and navigating the bottlenecks that are impeding your success in life and business define what your enough is. Your goal— if your goal is a revenue number or an amount of time that allows you to accomplish something, what is it that you're trying to accomplish? What is a good enough definition of what success looks like for you? Because if you're just going to throw arbitrary numbers, like I need to make $10,000 a month or $120,000 a year, is that really true? Is that the only way that you can live what you think of as a fulfilled life, a good enough day-to-day existence? You might not need that much. In fact, most of the time, We don't need more money or more time is not the solution because there's a finite amount of time and a finite amount of money available. If we actually just stop investing time and money into things that don't matter, we automatically increase our revenue and increase the amount of time that we have, and then we can actually invest it in the things that do matter to us. So you have to have a definition of success. I know I'm successful enough when— what does that look like? What does that feel like? What are you doing in your average day or your average week? How does an average day look? How much time is going towards your business? How much time is dedicated to your family? How much time is dedicated to your personal interests? How much time is invested in distractions and entertainment? These are all things that are worth considering, but if you have an idea of what a good enough day looks like, what a good enough life looks like, what a good enough amount of money to do the things that bring you a little bit of joy and happiness in your life, that's going to be a lot easier to fund and build a business that fits around than arbitrary goals like $10,000 consistent $10,000 months. Because if you're just trying to accomplish some sort of arbitrary goal, there's not a system. There's no way of refining a system to help you more effectively and efficiently achieve a vague or uncertain goal. Again, one of the other things that we just discussed is you can actually boost the effectiveness of your system you can start to boost the success of your life and business by simply eliminating all the places that you're investing time, attention, money, and effort that don't move the needle, that don't really have an impact on your sense of prosperity, joy, happiness, fulfillment, et cetera. In most cases, when members of the Circle community or clients that are working through the Purpose Driven Prosperity model do an actual audit of where they're actually spending their money, where their money is currently being invested and spent, where their time is currently being invested and spent, where their attention is being invested and spent, and where their energy is being invested and spent, they find that they can actually discontinue as much as 80% of those investments, and it has no discernible impact on their financial bottom line, which means that they are recapturing revenue, which is the same as earning revenue. It's actually better than earning revenue because it requires an investment in time, attention, money, and effort to create systems that boost revenue. But if you simply stop spending money on things that don't need to be spent on, doesn't cost you any time, attention, money, and effort, you actually recapture revenue, recapture time, recapture attention, and recapture energy that can all be reinvested in optimizing the elements of the system that are left that will help you get more of what you want easier and faster. Or you can simply reinvest those resources into the things in life that actually do matter to you. So clear the cruft, do a hard audit of where the time is going, where the money's going, where the attention is spent, where the effort is being expended, and get rid of all the things. Stop doing all the things that aren't getting you closer to what you actually want. When you do that, you will find that there are really just 2 or 3 things that have to go a little more right. In order to optimize your, your system's ability to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish. If you're looking at a business, you don't need to make more money. You don't need more clients. What you need to do is you need to craft an offer that is irresistible enough for an audience that is eager enough for that kind of offer and a system for putting that offer in front of that audience. That's all you really need. There's no inherent need or necessity to creating ideal customer avatars or defining a niche or creating a power offer or creating another launch or grinding out a bunch of content. Or architecting and engineering an incredibly inefficient leaky funnel that does nothing but eat resources for very little return on investment. You don't have to do any of those things. You don't have to invest in any of the digital marketing nonsense that everybody tells you you have to do. You can do what's always worked for businesses. Throughout history, come up with an offer that is irresistible enough to an audience that is eager enough to achieve what they can achieve through your offer or solve what they can solve through your offer. And then figure out how to get that offer in front of that audience in a way that builds awareness, earns attention, earns trust, earns permission. So that they become interested and enrolled in the journey you can take them on in terms of collapsing time to target to their goals and aspirations, and they will invest. You don't need to engage in any digital marketing nonsense. And once you have defined your offer, your audience, and your enrollment system, then it's just a matter of raising the floor on the piece of that system that's performing least effectively and efficiently. In most cases, people have a, have an offer that is working good enough and they have an audience that is dialed in well enough. They know who it is that they want to help and they know how they can help them. The problem is how is in the system that puts that offer in front of that audience. In which case you have to create the most effective and efficient system possible, which probably has nothing to do with ideal customer avatars, niching, power apples, funnel gymnastics, launch systems. It probably just has something to do with showing up as you are with what you have and do what you can with and for the people that are already somewhere where they're looking for someone like you with a solution to their problem or a means of achieving their aspiration. You don't have to perform. You don't have to become an influencer. You don't have to go viral. Most the folks that I know that are succeeding in business on their terms and playing their game without compromise and without any digital marketing nonsense. They're doing it just by reaching out to the people that are already in their sphere of influence, already in their network of connections, already in the circles of connection and communication that they already possess. And yes, Seth. I mean, if you like, if you like a funnel, if you love funnel hacking and tweaking funnels, and if you like plugging holes and super leaky funnels that deliver very little return on investment, by all means. But do you have to have a funnel? I can think of hundreds, thousands of businesses that operate without a funnel. And before we talked about digital marketing funnels. All businesses succeeded without a funnel. Funnels are an option. It's a tactic or a tool that you can decide to use if it's your thing. But for most purpose-driven solopreneurs, like the people that are tuning in here now and that are usually attracted to my work, we didn't sign up to do the work we do. We don't— we signed up to make the difference only we can make in the way that only we can make it. We didn't sign up for that work so that we could become expert digital marketers that spend 80 to 90% of their time tweaking their ideal customer avatar, tweaking their leaky funnel, grinding out content for social media, and creating ridiculous power offers that overpromise that can, uh, and make promises that can never truly be fulfilled. You don't need any of it. Show up as you are with what you have. Do your thing in places where people are already looking for solutions to the kind of problems you can solve, the aspirations you can help people achieve, and your people will find you. And then all you have to do is deliver on your promises. Make promises you can keep. And keep those promises. How's that for a simple system? How's that for something that's sustainable? How's that for something that can reduce the time that you're spending on digital marketing nonsense, reduce the effort that you're spending on digital marketing silliness, reduce the amount of money that you're spending on trying to power a leaky funnel that never delivers a return on investment that's actually worth it. And so let's get to the heart of it. How do you identify and navigate the things that are impeding your success in life and business? First, you have to understand that everything that is accomplished is accomplished through a system, and every system is perfectly designed to get the results it's getting. If you have a vague destination in mind, a vague outcome that you're trying to accomplish, if it's more money or more clients or any, anything else like that, there's no system in the world that's going to deliver that for you because it's not specific. It's not measurable. It's not achievable. And it's probably not relevant and it's certainly not time-bound. What do you need to accomplish specifically? Is it something that matters to you? Is it something that's achievable? And how soon do you want to accomplish it? If you can figure that out, if you can define the system, if you can define the outcome, then you can define the necessary components of that system. Then you can start to identify the bottlenecks and solve them in order. Most immediate bottleneck is always solved first because it increases flow. It gets you closer to what you're actually trying to accomplish with the least amount of wasted resources, time, attention, money, and effort. Gets you closer to your goal. What's the weakest element in any system? Emma, I know you know this already. Seth, you might know this already. But the weakest component of any system is the human being that is pushing the buttons and pulling the levers on the system. Your false beliefs, your cognitive biases, your dis— cognitive distortions and narrative fallacies, your self-limiting beliefs, they are all conspiring to drive down the efficiency of your system. So when you're really, when it really comes down to it, the least effective component of any system is the person that you see when you look in the mirror. The answer is not going to be found looking out the window. It's easy to look out the window and blame the economic situation or the political situation or the complications in the marketplace or the competition in the marketplace. And if you want to point your finger at all the other things that you can't control that are conspiring against you, it's a really seductive way to hide. If you want to create more certainty and earn confidence that you can accomplish success on your terms without compromising who you are and what you believe and what your values are and do it by leveraging your unique talents and abilities, then you have to be willing to look in the mirror and have a conversation about the identities and the behaviors that are conspiring to get in your own way and impede your ability to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish. And so maybe if you strip away all of the unnecessary tasks that you create for yourself every day, maybe if you stopped wasting time on social media, grinding out content for a system that will not allow anybody to see it unless you pay for it and will only allow a very small percentage of the people that should be seeing your content actually see it, even if you're paying a lot of money, maybe, maybe that's a way that you could put yourself a little bit more on the hook and encourage yourself to do the things that will actually help you connect with more of the right people by actually starting conversations that help identify where someone is and where they want to be and what's actually in their way that allow you to prove and exhibit your expertise, your unique ability in diagnosing how they can accomplish what they want to accomplish or solve what they want to solve in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort through your product or service, through your process, through a system that you've designed that helps— has helped you get from where you are to where you want to be and can help other people in a similar situation or with similar problems do the same. So really always comes down to starting with who, and the who you need to start with is you. If you know who you are, what your values are, guiding principles, non-negotiables, what you're good at, your core inherent soft skills, real talents, The things that you learned in school and on the job that help you better express who you actually are and what you're actually good at. And then you put yourself in scenes, in places where people share your values and need their, your talents to enhance their lives. You will be creating a system that allows you to connect with more of the right people that naturally attracts better fit prospects. And through conversation and diagnostics, you will be able to identify the best leads and you will be able to train those people into becoming perfect fit clients that you can actually help by keeping promises that you can actually keep. Helping them collapse time to target between where they are and where they want to be with increasing ease and velocity and less risk. And those people will become the best marketing you could ever have, and it will cost you nothing but doing meaningful work with people you actually care about. So that's my little riff rant for a Saturday afternoon on how to accomplish what it is that you're trying to accomplish in life or business by identifying and navigating what's actually in your way and by using system reliability, system thinking, reasoning from first principles, and microstepping your way into raising the floor and into possibility. So I hope that that was helpful for folks. It's great to see you, Seth. It's great to see you, Alice and Emma. These are all people that are just, uh, are here from the Circle community. If you're interested in conversations like this, we Gather every Monday and Friday for small group discussions about principles and practices that apply broadly to purpose-driven work and for increasing prosperity and peace of mind doing that work. And if you would like to get some help designing a business that is more prosperous but allows you to maintain your purpose-driven posture, then consider subscribing to Creative On Purpose. Check out the section, the articles under Transcendent Solopreneurship. If you're in a midlife transition or trying to define the next and step into your life's next chapter and make it the best ever, check out The Art of Encore Living. And if you would like to leverage the power of collective momentum to help you collapse time to target, consider becoming a paid subscriber and joining the Circle or Inner Circle community. It's incredibly affordable and delivers a ton of value, way outsized compared to the small investment. And we'd love to welcome you into the community and the conversation. So that's what I have for you today. I hope you all have a fantabulous rest of your weekend. And until I see you all again, be well, do good, have fun.