Using SYSTEMS (#FIREHOUR S3, E10)

We are going to give it just a few more minutes. Um, send in your last minute invites if you haven't done so already.

Yeah, 100%, get your entire team on.

So we are going to go over systems today. So if you guys have any questions, please send it in the chat. Um, it helps us when there's questions or there's comments so we know that you guys are understanding. Or just if you guys have any questions on systems in general, like it could be any type of question, whether you understand it, you don't understand it, you want to understand it. Um, just put in any questions that you guys have. We are going to go over systems today. I'm just finishing up a real quick post.

My bracelet broke.

Which one? Um, which, which crystal?

I think tourmaline.

Tourmaline. Okay, well, I know when I, I know when like, um when crystals break, or like crystal bracelets break, it means that, that, that specific, uh, crystal has already done what it's supposed to do for you. And so now it's like breaking, it's like releasing that. So where did it break though? Right here, all over the floor here. Oh my gosh. Okay, well, um, Later on, we'll pick up all the pieces so that the baby doesn't get to it.

How's everyone doing? I'm so fired up. Going on a run. We've been up.

Very exciting times as always, but that's just in general, right? Like when you're thriving, every day is like a new day and every, every day is exciting. Every day is a, a new chance.

All right, so if anyone has question— Not the tourmaline bracelet. What does that mean? So what does the tourmaline bracelet—

I feel like that's for negative energy, right? Tourmaline is— it's for negative energy. But I mean, yeah. And I think I had that made for you too. I think that was the one that I got you.

Yeah, that was the one. I know black tourmaline does fend off negative ions or something like that.

Or positive, because I think negative ions are good for you. And that's what you do when you like ground at the beach and stuff.

Yeah, that is true. Um, we can look at it later. I was just wondering if anyone knew. Okay, systems training, right? So I'm going to cover— I'm going to share with you guys this, okay? Because we're getting ready to start. If you have any questions when it comes to systems, specifically systems, then ask it in the chat. Can you please admit people?

Yes.

And here's, here's one thing that I'm going to cover because I It's so important to, to understand the concept of systems and then start to implement it in every aspect of your life. And the reason why it's because if you are focused on your goals and dreams, if you're focused on pouring your intentions towards actions that are gonna help you manifest what you want in your reality, then it's important to set up systems because system stands for save yourself some time, energy, and money. And who doesn't want to save some time, energy, and money, especially when you have big aspirations, when your ambition is this high, when you want to go after something that is different than everyone else, something that is specifically uniquely for you. So when it comes to systems, I'm going to share with you that I'm not going to give you guys fishes today. Okay. The goal is to teach you how to fish, right? There's a, there's this quote. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime, right? That applies to all of us here. So when it comes to systems, I'm gonna share with you how to fish. I'm gonna teach you how to fish because everyone's life looks differently. Everyone's life and situation is different. So when it comes to your systems that you implement for yourself, having an understanding of what systems is a basic concept, and then I'm going to share with you some tactics of what can work, you know, what, what has worked for us, but can also give you some ideas, some golden nuggets. But if you have any specific questions for your situation, then ask it in the chat.

So systems is for anything and everything. It's for your personal life and your schedule and your family life, and it's also for work, or it's for business. It's pretty much projects, anything and everything. So this applies to like in your business, out of your business, in your personal life, out of your personal life. But, um, systems has been so helpful when you are going after a goal, but yet you still have your life to live, right? Like you might have kids, you might have a home, you might have other people that you take care of, right? Systems help you to maintain everything all at the same time And yes, system, again, if you guys didn't hear it, it stands for save yourself some time, energy, and money. So when you have a system in place working for you, you don't have to think. Um, for me as an entrepreneur and as a mom, the most important thing for me to do is to think. Like, I need my thinking time, right? And so our brain can only withstand stand like so much thinking, you know what I mean? Like in a day, like how much thinking do you do? And sometimes we're just kind of automated, right? Where we are just like on autopilot and we are just going, right? Um, so what systems does is it basically helps you alleviate your brain power. So when something is really easy and you don't have to think too much about it, or you have a system in place where everything is already there, it helps you a lot, right? Like You want to free your mind to always be able to think about whatever you have on your plate at the moment. Like if you have a goal and you are trying to get somewhere you've never been before, you want to systemize anything and everything you have going, right? So if you have kids, sometimes they have activities, sometimes there's minimum days, sometimes they have breaks here and there. And like, I swear their schedules are everywhere. Like back in the days, like I don't remember having this many breaks or this many minimum days or this this much time off of school, but nowadays they have like all these random days, right? So I mean, the worst thing you could do is forget to pick up a child, right? So for Sean and I, we have our systems in place, and what our systems look like is we like to use, um, we like to use a project management tool in all of our businesses as well as our personal life, and we share boards, right? So it's, project management tool called Trello. And so it's online, it's on our phone, it's on our desktop, and we always have our phones with us, right? So because we always have our phones with us, we decided to use that project management tool a few years ago. And basically what we do every day or every week is like we brain dump, right? So, you know, when there's those things where you're like, oh, I need to get this for the house or that for the house, or so-and-so has this practice today, or whatever, like dump that all like into your board and like make it very clean and manageable. Um, I think, yeah. So we're, I was just, yeah, I was just going over like the project management tool that we use for business and personal and how we share it. Um, sometimes he might have a meeting or sometimes I have an appointment and I, at that moment I can't really tell him. And at that moment, if I text him, he might open it, read it real quick, and then he might forget it. So what we do, no, I will forget it. Yeah. So what we do is I will still text it because he could see it right away. But then I also put that reminder into our shared family board, like, hey, this is what's going on, where I'm going to be, where I'm at and what time. And these are like the things that I need you to do if I'm like out and about, right? And same with him. So that's kind of one tool that we use that we love to use. Some people like to use journals and write things down, but then you have to like take your journal with you everywhere. And if you forget your journal, then like what's going to happen to your whole day, right? Yeah.

So when it comes to systems, especially when it's a couple, right? When you are in a relationship, when you are a team, I'm going to share with you the one thing that breaks systems. It's communication. Okay. It's communication. Here's why. It's because if you think about it, if you think of a team, right? There's, you know, we have two different minds, right? We're not activating the mastermind framework, the mastermind principle. So if she has something in her schedule that needs to get done and that's her responsibility, but it includes me and I don't know about it, automatically the system breaks, right? So where is an area in your life where you have to work with someone else and just simply because of lack of communication, something doesn't get done? Think about it for yourself. These are questions to ask yourself. These are questions to write down for yourself where if you don't know why something's not working, first and foremost, chances are it might be a communication issue, right? It might be lack of communication. There's something called overcommunication where even if you feel like you've communicated enough, you gotta 10x it, 10x the communication. And I'm talking specifically in work environments. Right? Uh, the work where I learned this framework over communication, I'm gonna write some stuff down because Trello, the project management tool, Trello is a tactic. Okay? It, I consider that a tactic, but that is a foundational system that you can customize for your specific situation. All right? So when it comes to systems, systems, save yourself some time, energy, and money. Every single aspect of your life, like I said, should have a system in play. I'm gonna share with you guys the system for Fire Hour, right? The system for Fire Hour right now is based on feedback, based on your ideas, based on the chat, based on what is needed in the business, in your business or in your life, right? So for example, an episode that we did before was someone wanted to get better at public speaking, whether they took action on it or not. I don't know, but it was in, you know, we received it and we're like, all right, this is going to be an episode for later on because we need to get to it. Now we have it in and it's up there. The good thing about that is we already have a lot of experience when it comes to public speaking, just simply because we're showing up every single day, or we show up in meetings, or we show up for our children, or we show up for Zooms, whatever the case may be. Every single person here is a public speaker. Why? It's because you're always communicating. So that right there, those are just lessons, workshops. I spent money to learn how to public speak. It's the same exact thing. There is someone in here who has experience that you don't have yet. You just need to ask the question to receive that information. That's the power of a mastermind, right? That's the power of having people who are willing to share anything, right? So obviously specifically for Fire Hour, we want to go hard on business, but you know, when it comes to wealth, right? But when it comes to just anything that you have, it's always important to ask, like ask the questions in the room that you're in because you just never know how insightful it can be for someone else. So systems, right? Systems save yourself some time, energy, and money. I'm going to keep on repeating that. Just simply because that is the golden nugget. That one-liner right there is the golden nugget. That is the 1%. If you don't fully understand that concept, if you're not implementing that concept in all aspects of your life, you don't understand systems enough. I'm telling you that right now. If you don't have a system for your children, if you don't have a system for FIRE Hour, if you don't have a system for, you know, your Thrive business, if you don't have a system for anything, any endeavor, that is requiring your time and your thinking, your energy, then you need to go deeper on that. That is a 1%er right there. There's a book called Atomic Habits. Who here has read Atomic Habits? I just picked it up 2 weeks ago through audio. And the reason for that is because my barber, he, he, I shared with him like a few months ago, yo, like reading is dope. Reading is fire. If you're going after your goals and dreams, reading is one of the keys. To getting you ahead. When it comes to books, he literally picked it up 2 weeks ago. He said he's picking up Atomic Habits. I never picked it up until 2 weeks ago. Right away, my system for becoming a learning machine, being a learning machine— I hear something that can possibly add value to my life, I take action on it immediately.

Why?

It's because that's just what my system is for myself, the intangible system. You see, so there's intangible systems now, there's tangible systems. There are systems again for every aspect of your life. Think about it for yourself as a leader, right? You are a leader. You're leading your own shit. You're the one that's gonna take your life to where you want to go. Guess what? If you don't have a system for yourself to become a learning machine, then you're gonna go slower towards your goals, you know, or you might miss your goals by a little bit. Why not apply all the knowledge that you learn? Why not apply all the information that you receive? Why not apply all the lessons that you can, you know, that come to your life? And then from there, take action on it and then see the results. See what happens next. You just never know what you're saying no to. You never know what you're saying yes to as well. So it's important for yourself to just take action faster, experiment a lot faster. And apply like these different like tactics that we're going to be talking about. Um, there's a tactic inside, it's like more of like a decision-making process. It's the split tree, okay? It's the two paths. Every single person here has an opportunity to say yes or no, and here's what happens when you say yes. So it's basically yes, no, okay? Everything that you do, I'm teaching you guys the framework of system setting. Every decision that you make, it's a yes or no decision based on what you say yes to. You know, it forks like that, but there's always two forks. There's always two forks in the road, right? Two doors, two paths. This path right here may not lead to anything, and then this path may branch off to another one, and it continues to get you close to your goal. The goal of this thing is your, your focus is your goals right here. You're trying to get to here, your, your endpoint, wherever, whatever that vision is for yourself, for your life. That's where you're trying to go, right? Remember, be, do, have. Once you be, once you be what you want to have, you will automatically start to shift these different things towards this goal right here. And there's ways to shortcut going to your goals. Okay. That is the truth. One of the goals that when I, when I first started entrepreneurship, one of the goals was just to make more income, right? That was not for me. Like that was everything because where I grew up and how my family finances were, it was everything. Making an extra 6 figures a year would change our entire lives. Right. Guess what? That was it though. You know, after making the income, I didn't— this is something that is important for you, especially when it, especially when it comes to system setting and then going after your goals. If you hit your goal, I'm gonna tell you this right now. This is something that I learned that I should have known better, but I didn't. Okay? When you hit your goal, and trust me, this goes back into systems, okay? When you hit your goal, when you hit your goal, if you did not set a higher goal than that, or a more impactful goal than that, or whatever goal, right, a bigger goal, the next level goal, I'm going to share with you one thing that happens to you. You plateau. You plateau. Here's why. It's because subconsciously You feel like you've made it, so then you, you stop pushing harder. But I'm gonna share with you one of the laws of leadership is when you are a winner and you're winning and you hit your goal, you accomplish that one milestone for yourself. It's a milestone, okay? You hit that milestone. There is another milestone waiting for you to hit, waiting for you to achieve. If you did not set that intentionally for yourself, Or if you haven't received that for yourself yet, start to do it now. Start to do it today. The reason for that is because I'm telling you right now, everyone who has hit a goal, and I'm talking from my personal experience, everyone who's hit a goal yet they didn't have a bigger goal, a deeper impact goal, something that is gonna help them push momentum forward, help them go after their goals, dig deeper within. I'm telling you right now, the energy of plateau, the energy of momentum gone, is there in your subconscious mind. It's in your life somewhere. It might be lurking around, might be hidden deep, but I'm telling you right now, this is the time to go within, really dive deep into yourself, set some thinking time aside for yourself, right? Whatever your, your routine is. Whatever, if it's a journaling practice, if it's meditation, if it's just going out in nature, if it's sitting at a park, whatever the case may be, think about what your next goal is gonna be because this is gonna give you ammunition. This is gonna give you fuel on the fire. This is going to help you get pulled towards your vision instead of pushed by your pain. This right here, this next level goal is what every single person I encourage you to set. There should be milestones, okay? There should be different milestones for different stages. Just because you make a million dollars doesn't mean that's the end of the journey. Just because you've changed 1,000 people's lives doesn't mean that's the end of the journey. Why not 100x those efforts? Why not set and shoot for a bigger goal, right? So that, that's specifically for people who've already hit a goal. That's for someone who has already achieved a dream goal. Yet there is more. There is more work to be done. You're still here for a reason. There are reasons for you to exist. There is an impact that you can make in someone's life because you are here. There are so many different aspects of this, this next level thing for you. What is it though? What is it? And do you know it? Right? So there's no right or wrong. This is specifically for you. This is uniquely for you. This is your life path right here. But again, I'm just sharing this with you because with these systems, when you start to implement systems, you're going to be shoot— ideally, you're going to be shooting towards these goals and accomplishing them. And then you're going to be like, what is next? Okay, that's the goal. So the systems, when you set up systems, automatically I assume that you're going to be moving a lot faster. Automatically I assume that you're going to start to accomplish things faster. You're going to achieve your goals faster. Just simply because of the time that you're gonna get back and the energy that you'll get back. In the beginning of setting systems up, there's kind of like 3 stages. Stage 1 is ideation, creation. Stage 2 is implementation, experimentation. And then stage 3 is data gathering, results, right? Understanding what's working, what's not working. And that's stage 3 is right here. It's, does this work? Yes. No. Okay, what is next? You go back to ideation, creation, and then stage 2, implementation, experimentation. Stage 3, yes or no, did it work? That's the 3 stages right there. There's 7, the scientific method, the 7 questions to ask yourself, proven and by science. Guess what? That is the same exact thing. That's the same exact process. I just put it into 3 steps, but you know, maybe go with the 7 steps.

Well, to add on to that, like when I look at what you've drawn out, it's like It's like, okay, so when you're going from goal to goal and you're setting systems in place, yeah, what helped you get to the first goal? And can you do it better? Can you do it faster? What worked? What didn't work? And what do you wanna test out next time? Right? And so as you start to implement systems into your life according to your goals, and it could be as easy as On Wednesday, I need to go here and do this. Is that something that you do every single week? Maybe once a month, maybe every quarter, right? Because if it's something that you do repetitively, there's usually a system that you want to set to it. Because if you actually start to think and you start to like write things down or like type things in about what you're doing, why you're doing it, you're going to actually be like, okay, is there a faster way I can do this? Is there a better way I can do this? Because whatever you did to get to a certain goal using a certain system, it may work the first time, but maybe it doesn't work the second time when you're trying to go faster, you're trying to scale. So at that point you got to look and you got to go back to your system and you got to say, okay, what's going on here? What do I need to do? How can I do it better? How can I do it faster? Right? Because once you do something, you can do it again. But if you have a system in place that helps you on how you started and how you got to that goal, there's always ways to test things that work, that don't work, and to make things faster, right? So how I can relate to it is just like, hey, by 33 I hit a net worth of a million, right? And to me, that took, right, almost 33 years of my life. But once I did that, I was like, how did I do that? What did I do? How can I do it faster? But I took the time to actually think and to review the systems that I had set in place, right? So then from 33 to 36, I jumped and I hit like my next million. So I became a multi— a net worth of multi-millions within 3 years. So when you set, and this is the importance of systems, right? Like you have to take some time to think about what you're doing on a day-to-day basis and implementing it. If this is something that you often do or you hit this goal, now take the time to be like, how did I hit this goal? What did I do? Where did I start? What worked? What didn't work? Are there people that are going after the same goal with me? And can I have a mastermind with them? Can we talk? Can we ask questions? Can we say, hey, like, what did you do? Right? Like, if you did that, what did you do and how do you think you could have been better? And you, you start to form a mastermind of people that are asking questions, giving comments in order to get faster, right? Because I did these things really without like a mentor, like I did not have a mentor teaching me necessarily about how to make the jump. I had to kind of like figure it out on my own just by taking the time to slow down, to look at my previous system. Okay, so this is what I did, this is what I did, this is what I did next. Okay, now how do I make that jump? How do I make it faster? Because again, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. What are you going to do with your 24 hours? Like, what can you do? Because anything is completely possible, right? But systems have been something where there's a lot of things that, like, you don't need to think about every day. You don't have to, like, think about it. If you just plug it into a system and set certain alarms to go off, you don't even have to think about it. So your mind, your brain power, is all solely focused on what you need to focus on. And most of the time, it should be income-producing activities. It should be, what is my goal? And not things that really aren't going to help you in life and get you any further in life. So that is the importance of setting systems, is really seeing, like, what did I do to get to a certain place? How can I do it again? How can I do it better? And how can I do it faster and be more efficient? Right? Um, so that's how I can kind of relate as you were talking about systems and like drawing things out. I'm like, okay.

Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. So right now, like, you know, system input output. The whole goal of implementing a system is what Crystal is saying is being able to just understand How can you get more done in less time with less effort, with less energy, right? And then if your goal is money, then this will automatically, depending on the vehicle that you have, will automatically increase because of implementation, because you're able to work more on the IPAs in comp producing activities when it comes to it, right? This can be a goal, whatever your goals are. Okay? So The goal is this right here, just to give you a drawing, decrease the time, decrease the energy, increase your goals, whatever that is. This is about speed right here. This is speed. When you create a system, it's to, it's just to alleviate chokeholds and constraints and friction points, and also to implement going after your goals faster, achieving the, whatever that, that impact may be, whatever that result may be. I know you guys may not be able to see this part right here, but it just says, where is the friction? Okay, so I want to add, don't constrict your mind on the path. Make a plan, yes, but don't let that narrow your mind on the millions of ways you could do it instead. View the goal and keep an open mind about the journey. Like Sean said, keep a student mentality to continue growth and keep moving forward. View all possibilities as potential paths. Yes. And you know what? One thing to add to that then too is even though you feel, because I've done, I've felt this way before. I felt like I was lost off my path before. What I learned after being lost for about 2 years is everything was on path. Everything was already on path. It was just about the unfolding. So no matter where you go, like, right, just to add to what Sierra is saying, because it's so true, all paths are possibilities. There are endless possibilities out there depending on which one you do. It is your journey that you're on. You're always on path. If you feel lost right now, hear these words: you're always on path. It's just about the unfolding of the journey. That's your journey right there that you're on, okay? You're on that journey. So take it from me, someone who was lost for a while— I'm telling you, I was lost for a while until I was found. So Anyways, that is so crucial, okay, for anyone going after their goals and dreams, for anyone that is on their journey towards whatever that goal is. You know, sometimes you will feel lost. There are many times that you'll feel lost, but just know that's always on path. But keep your focus, keep your intentions on your goals, keep your intentions on what you really want to manifest in your life, in your reality, bring forth into existence. This right here is just gonna You know, this is one aspect only. Okay, so inputs and outputs. You know, think about it for yourself. If this is what Crystal was saying, if you have to think and if you have to use and expend energy, your energy, your time, then that means there's room for improvement for a system. Because the goal really is to set up a system so that way it works with or without you. Specifically keywords without you. Okay, if you have a system that you have to continuously work on, work in, use your time and energy for, that is not a system. The reason for that is because you're literally trading your time and energy. Now, how can we— a good question to ask for your business: how can you decrease the time and energy that you put into your business and increase the speed to your goals and dreams. How can you do that? One question to ask yourself is, where is the friction? Where is the constraint? Where is the chokehold? What is slowing me down from duplicating myself? What is slowing me down from help making this system work without me? These are all good questions to ask yourself because Again, depending on your vehicle of choice, depending on your business vehicle, depending on your job, your career, whatever the case may be, your situation, how can you implement a system where you're, you know, you're not trading your time and energy anymore for your goals and dreams? What system is that? For those of you who don't have a business, for those of you who don't have a Part-Time Fortune Maker, for those of you who don't have Thrive, for those of you who don't have anything on the side of your full-time stuff, you know, start thinking about that and figure out what vehicle that's going to be. Because I'm telling you right now, especially if you have goals and dreams and you want to make more income, again, if you don't have a vehicle that requires less time and less energy from you to make more income to hit your goals, then you're not going to get there. That's just the truth, okay? I didn't know that before when I had a full-time job. I had no idea. But, you know, we're here, we're entrepreneurs, so we know.

I'm going to add a story.

Yeah, go for it.

And I'm going to add this story because I think that sometimes when we have stories, it helps, right? I'm going to— so there's a story about how I created a system before, and my purpose was not— I didn't know going into it, I didn't know that I was going to create a system or I needed a system. It was my first time No one taught me anything. And I'm going to share this story just because, like, the other day, the other day, like a really like an employee from many, many years ago, like called me and reached out to me and was like, hey, I need you like as a reference, right? And so when I saw that, I thought about this story just, just right now. And so back in the day when I was working at my dad's company and we had a mortgage firm, right? So we did residential mortgages. I come from a direct lending background and And I remember like I was training, right? So I was always training people. So new people would come in and I would have my system to train. And most of the time what that looked like was, come here, sit next to me. This is what you were hired for and this is what we're going to do. And I would be like, grab a notebook and grab a pen because I do not like repeating myself. I do not like repeating myself. So I would go over pretty much anything and everything. I even had my own notes, right? So I was like, you can make copies of my notes, and if you see certain things change, or if you see a better way, I'm like, I am open. Like, let me know, you know what I mean? Let me know what you think is the easier, faster way. And if it's easier and faster, I'm more than happy to implement that into like the existing system that I have for myself already, which comprised of notes because I didn't want to think about what I had to do when we were doing loans and processing and underwriting. There was a thousand steps. So I don't know if any of you have been in the residential lending business, but there is a lot of steps to it. There's a lot of paperwork and it's like your brain can only think so much, right? Until it becomes instinctual. But I was like, I don't want to think about all these small things and I don't want to forget these things. So I would have the person sit next to me and I would go through a file and I would show them like, this is what you do, this is where you go, and here's my notes. Follow my notes that I've already created on it. And if I'm missing something, please just add it in and we'll, we'll type it in later. And if you have any questions, let me know, but let me go through it first and then you can go over through all your questions, right? And then I just did that on repeat. And so they would take notes. And if they weren't taking notes, I'd be like, are you writing this down or are you going to remember this? Because I know for me, I can't remember like the first time, right? And I would literally check in with them like, are you taking notes? Like, do you understand? And are you writing this down? Because I don't want to repeat it again. And so it came to a point where I had a system and I had notes and they had their notes. But you want your notes or your system to be frictionless, like there are no breaks in it. So basically they could take all those notes, take all the paperwork that I gave to them, and essentially they should be able to go through it on their own without me. Right. And so we would keep doing this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. All the questions that they had, all the comments that they had, all the things that maybe I even missed because before I was doing this on my own and it came to a point where I showed them here's where the resources are because I started noticing they were— people were coming back to me. So it was like what you said before, learned helplessness, right? Like you teach people to rely on you so much that they don't know what to do on their own. And so if people are constantly coming to you for questions and you're like, I went over this before, like, da da da da, like it's time you had a system in place and resources there so that you can always drive them back to the resources. And so for me, a pet peeve was If you keep coming to me asking me for the same questions over and over, I obviously didn't teach you correctly, train you correctly. You don't have the proper materials or you don't know where to get your questions answered. So I basically started creating a new system again and I was, and I was just refining it and I would be like, okay, you have this question, what is your question? Okay. And then I would ask them like, where do you think you would find the answer? Like if today I didn't show up to work, you know, or I was sick or I wasn't here and you had no one to ask, what would you do? And so I started to have other people think, what would I do? What should I do? But they wouldn't have thought that if I just gave them the answers all the time, right? So then I started teaching them how to find their own answers and where to find the resources. But in order to do that, you need to have the resources set in place. And I always direct them to the resource because yes, it's easy to answer someone's question right on the spot, but you can do that. You can answer the question on the spot and then you can show them, this is where I found it. This is where I found it. This is where you go. This is how you— this is how you go, right? And so when you create a system in place that no longer relies on you, you start to free up your time. And when you start to free up your time, instead of working so deeply in the business or so deeply in that thing you're doing, now you have time to think, to work on it. And when you have time to work on it, you have time to think things through and to see things that you weren't seeing before because you were so busy being that resource and being their system for their answers. So systems, going back, you want to teach a man how to fish. You want to teach a man or a woman how to fish, right? You give a man a fish, he eats for a day. You teach a man how to fish, he eats for the rest of his life. And so it, it does take time to teach people. It does take time to create a system. It does take time to show them where the resources are, but it is so worth it because eventually I freed up my time instead of spending the all day answering questions, training, retraining, going back to staff. It came to the point where they would literally walk into my office and I would look up at them and they just immediately with one look, they knew, they knew the answer. They knew the answer because after a while, after I showed all the resources and I showed how you can find your own answer without me, like, you can do this, like, you're good. They realized they would look at me and they would be like, oh my gosh, she's going to go tell me to check up the guidelines or to go on this website or to make this phone call to this or to look here, here, there. It's like they knew what I was going to say as soon as I looked up as they entered the office. Like they just knew, like, if you're going to enter my room, like, this better be a really good question and you better have actually done some work to look through the resources and go through our system and your notes before you talk to me.

Yeah, and it's so true. So right with what she's talking about, you know, like a question to ask yourself is, do you have a resource center? Do you have a centralized location where there's FAQs? There's SOPs. Remember I talked about this before? Standard operating procedures. You got to set those up. It's important. I have stories for that too, but this right here is the takeaway from that story is do you have a resource center that has SOPs, right? SOP, standard operating procedures, step-by-step instructions without you. Without you, someone can do it. Without you, someone can get the job done. Okay, that's what it is. And this is how you scale. This is how you get beyond where you're at today. If you are working inside your business, in the business, not on it, but in the business, you're trading your time and energy. You're in the business. You have to have this SOP. Okay, I have it for Fire Hour. Just because we get the idea doesn't mean that that's step— that's, you know, that's it. You know, that doesn't mean that we just turn the cameras on and then we go. We can do that because that's just part of our strengths, right? But obviously what's next? What's after fire hour, right? Once I stop the meeting, what happens, right? This recording gets sent to the cloud. That's automatic. That's without me. We're shooting on an iPhone. Right? So I have to, now I have to implement, how do I get the iPhone footage into the computer, into the Google Drive, and then from there, spliced and synced into Adobe Premiere. That's the video editing software I use for the desktop. And then from there, how do I refine it and download it and make sure that it's worthy of watching? Right? There's so many different steps to that. And that's just the, that's just like post-production. What about like splicing it into short-form content, uploading it to long-form content? What about distributing it to all these different platforms? What about like the timestamps for video editors, for myself, for anybody, right? There's all these different steps. That's an SOP. I have it over here. I have my own SOP that I created for myself that works. Okay. But does it work without me? Not right now. Why? I need to duplicate someone else to do all that stuff for me. In the nonprofit, we have a system for the, this exact same thing, right? It's a, it's just the same situation, right? Same situation, just, just look, just looks differently. But depending on the goal, you know, how can we create a system that works? What is our resource center for that, right? With the auto shop, what is our SOP for our social, social media, right? There's different SOPs for different businesses. What is it for you? What's your resource center? How are you going to create it so that way you are not in the business anymore and instead you're thinking bigger? Like what Crystal was saying, you're able to think big and think through. Guess what? It starts with this. It starts with duplicating yourself so that way you have some place where other people are now trading their time and energy to learn the system, to learn the resource, to be guided on their path towards their goals and dreams while you are using your time and energy for bigger things. While you are making bigger moves, you're able to think through, to think bigger, think bigger. Okay, here's a story that I'll share with you that may, uh, resonate. This is 2015, all right? I got my dream job, landed my dream job. With an online company, right? Uh, my former mentor, it's fully remote. Basically, the only reason why I say it's fully remote is because it was an online business. Everything that we did was online, but I was in the office working because that's the backend, right? It's the backend. Just because you have an online business doesn't mean that there's no backend, right? There is the website, There is how do customers order? There is shipping. There is Q&A. There is customer constraints. There is refunds. There is purchases. There's all that stuff on the backend. Okay. The beauty of Thrive specifically is that you don't have to worry about the backend. All you have to worry about is the frontend, which is really magical. If you, if you only have to worry about the frontend, automatically your time and energy is used towards the right things. Yeah, income-producing activities. That's the truth right there. This right here, time and energy, is focused in on income-producing activities only. Part of the income-producing activities for Thrive specifically is leadership, is duplication, is training other people, is fire hour. Okay, this right here, power hours, fire hours, whatever the Zoom calls that you guys are on whatever the mastermind calls you guys are on, whatever events you guys attend, that right there is an income-producing activity for the Thrive Business. The beauty of it is that it's just, it's about getting better. It's about self-improvement. It's about life mastery. It's about becoming the best version of yourself. It's not easy. It's not easy to work on yourself. It takes humility, coachability, humbleness to go after your goals and to like dive deeper within. But we're all leaders here, so that right there, all automatically by you working on yourself, already differentiates yourself from the rest. How many people out there want to work on themselves, and how many people don't?

How many people even know that they should work on themselves, right? Yeah. And like, that's the beauty of this specific business is that, you know, when, when I was at a job, when I owned companies, it was never like, oh, we should work on ourselves. We should constantly improve like ourselves, like our emotions, like where we come from, like why do we do the way we do things? But had there been self-development implementation, which I feel like is so important and which is actually what we do implement in all of our businesses now, just to help someone, It's so important. And so although, yes, we are talking about systems and how it relates to a lot of your business, right, it also relates to your personal life. Like, what is your system in your personal life? What is your system for getting better every single day? What is your system for your schedule? Right. Systems also lead into time management because if you're like, I have all these things going on, but I'm also still trying to like, you know, get to my goals and dreams. So what is your system and your time management? How does your— like, how did your time management and your systems— like, they married each other, right? And now how does that work into play for yourself, right? How do you add in the self-development? How do you add in the scheduling? How do you make sure that you add in your income-producing activities that are, that are going towards your goals into your system of your daily life amongst everything else.

And that, like, life is business, right? Because you are in business. That's part of intangibles, okay? That's part of intangibles right here. The intangibles is working on you, is working on the self-mastery, is improvement. Because everyone, especially in Thrive, there's— you are in a community of people going after their goals and dreams on getting better. On self-mastery, on self-improvement, on make and improving your life. Intangibles is part of that process. That's why in network marketing you'll see majority of leaders personally developed because they've been working on themselves. Majority of— this is what I've experienced— majority of the people out there who are really great at speaking, who can really move mountains, who can— they can lead an army. They are personally developed because they've been working on themselves because they understand the power of personal development. That is one of the biggest takeaways I got from stepping into network marketing is self-mastery is the door and the path of knowing, finally knowing that, oh, I can get better. Oh wow. There's all this mindset training. There's all these different principles out there. There is ways to model what works. Right? There's all these things. One thing that really helps me grow every day is the Mindset Day Planner. Okay, nice. It helps you get— it helps you set goals for the day, top 3s, to-do lists, affirmations, and gratitude all in one. I use it all in the morning and write down everything happening each hour. That's really good. That's, you know, if that works, boom. Yeah, that's your system right there. You know, if that works for you, dive deeper into that, right? That is intangibles right there. That's working on you. You'll never get— you'll never lose from working on yourself. Okay? So that's really good. Again, this right here though, right? The SOPs. For me, when I was working in that online company, right? I was in the very beginning working in the business, trading my time and energy, and I was creating the systems. I didn't know at the time, but I was creating the systems. By the end of the time of my career there, Michael Resurreccion, before I left, I was clocking in and I was literally for 8 hours. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I here? Because I literally set up a system where I don't have to work anymore. I literally set up a system where I didn't have to work anymore in that business, in that company. And I'm an employee in that company. I was an employee in that company and they were paying me $80,000 a year. And I said, what am I doing? That's, this is the importance of setting bigger goals. Okay, at the time I achieved one of my goals, one of my dream jobs. I was making more money than I ever made in my entire life, and I was clocking in, and I created a system where I don't have to even work anymore. Literally, that's an online business. That's— everyone here can achieve that because it's an online business. Everyone here can achieve creating those systems where it's duplicatable for everyone. And now You're literally just clocking in basically and saying, oh, what am I gonna do today? Yeah. I know at the time I was working on personal development because, but other than that, I was kind of lost. I was like, what am I doing here? Like what, what, what is next? You know, am I happy here? I started to question myself. Am I happy? Like I'm making more money than I've ever made in my entire life, you know? And I'm questioning myself. It's because I didn't set bigger goals. It's because I didn't dive deeper. It's because I wasn't working on myself. If it's— there's so many different ways, there's so many different external pressures that was on me, you know, I was lost. But guess what? At least I created a system. I know how it works, right? And I duplicated this system in other businesses, in other companies that are fully remote, that are fully online. Why? Because I already know how to create systems. That's part of my strengths. That's one— that's something that I learned, I took away from that career. I learned how to duplicate online systems, online businesses. Guess what? It's the same exact process with Thrive. It's the same exact thing. Decrease time, decrease energy, create a resource center with SOPs, specific standard operating procedures, step-by-step instructions. And then from there, everything else goes towards IPAs. If you have not cracked the code yet, on duplication, then that means that there is work to be done right here in this process. And there are ways, but it's about being coachable. It's about lowering the guard to understand like, hey, maybe this way isn't, isn't the way anymore. Maybe there's a better way. Okay. There is always gonna be a better way because of technology and so, and software, right? There is all these different software. So going back to like tangibles now, right? Like the tactics. The items, the tools. Trello. I'm going to erase this. Yeah, but Trello is one where I'm just going to list out a bunch. And what I'll do too is I'm going to be working on like my downtime.

I don't know what downtime, your sleep time.

Yeah, my sleep. I'm going to work in my sleep.

You're going to work in your sleep during your downtime?

Yeah, I don't have downtime. What am I talking about?

What do you guys do? So as he's doing this, what do you guys do? So Madeline, did I say your name right? Madeline, she uses the Mindset Day Planner, which I think is— okay, awesome— which I think is great. Like, it sets your goals for the day, your top 3s, your to-do list, and your affirmations and gratitude. Yes, starting your day off with affirmations and gratitude and being grateful for everything you already have sets the most amazing tone for the rest of the day, right? Because I know that I actually have like, do you remember my— it's in our room. What is it, a painting?

What, the vision board?

No, it's like a painting, but it says start each day with a grateful heart, you know? So yes, those are so important, right? Like what is your, what is your daily method of operation when it comes to a certain system that you run off of on a day-to-day basis? Like what do you have implemented into your day-to-day system besides your schedule and your list of things to do and the things that everyone needs. What is your system? What is your daily method of operation for a system that you have created specifically for your goal? Because if you don't write out— and this is something new to you, and you're going after a new goal that you never went before— you need a daily method of operation of what you're going to do with that goal or for that goal. Because every day in life Everyone's busy, right? Like you wake up, you have work, you have a business, you have kids, you have a home, you have errands to run, what have you. So what system do you have that's set in your every single day of life that you can just go off of? Like you already know, like what you have to do and you just do it, right?

Yeah.

What is it? Where is it?

You know what? Like one thing to add is that it's triggers. Okay. I put that the first thing. A tool, okay? Triggers. And again, I encourage you guys, every single time I drop a book, every single time I drop a book, a name of a book, it's for a reason, okay? Atomic Habits, that's a book I dropped earlier today. Atomic Habits talks about a lot of different principles from all these other books. There's at least 6 or 7 different books that's referenced it from Atomic Habits. Okay. The Compound Effect is one of them. All right. There, there's many different books. Okay. When I was reading Atomic Habits, yeah. When I was reading Atomic Habits, I was like, oh damn. Like I heard it from this book. Okay. I heard this from this book. I heard this from this book. One of the things that they talk about in Atomic Habits is triggers. They talk about triggers and specifically relating it back to what Crystal was saying, right? With the sign that we have in our room. The very first thing that we will see when we wake up is "Start each day with a grateful heart" and our vision board, and our vision board right next to it, right? And so what is that doing for us on the subconscious level? What trigger is that doing to us? What's the cause of that, right? What is the cause of that and what's the effect? Well, the effect may be we start each day with a grateful heart. The trigger of looking, the cause of looking at our vision board is, oh, here's where I'm going, this is where I'm going, right? So guess what, what triggers you have, physical triggers you have, what signs you have. I remember when I had my own, my own place by myself, no kids, I was writing everywhere on the walls, writing on the mirrors, writing the walls, like non-negotiables, dominating my path, going after my— there's all these things you can use words as triggers. Positive words we have right there: love, forever and always. That's a sign that we have right there, right? There's many different signs. Love to love me, you know. CS, that's Crystal and Sun. That's for us, no, that's part of feng shui, right? That— this is all triggers right here. So what triggers do you have around your physical environment, around yourself? When you're on your phone, right? If you're on your phone and you look at your home screen, what's on your home screen, right? What triggers What apps are you looking at that triggers you to cause, to press, right? That, that's part of that. Every single thing in Atomic Habits, they talk about the yes and no. They talk about, you know, if you do this, if this, then that. They talk about that. If this, then that.

This is a, I don't know if you guys can see it, but that's like a photo of the book. So every time, part of your system is every time he reads the book and he implements The One Percenter in that book and takes action on it. And he's like, people need this. This is so good. He literally has his system where he has like a book list. So he uploads every single book that's ever changed his life, helped him on his mindset or things that he trains into like our website. Right. So that's another system and another layer added on to everything else that we do. So right away he sees a book, reads a book, takes action. It's good. It's not— it's good. It's going to help people. Boom. It goes on the book list, right? Yeah.

I just put it on the book list right away, just simply because there's people that ask me like, hey, what should I read? And then I ask them like, what's your goal? And then I say, and then they tell me their goal. Literally, um, a couple days ago, a guy DM'd me and he's, he's talking to like, he's someone that has, uh, purchased from me before in the past. And he was saying like, hey, like, you know, I want to get better at high status networking. That's something that I created. High status networking, how to network with high status people. Right? He asked me, how can I do that? How can I learn more? Is there a book I can read? And I asked him his goal, and then he told me like that he's an elected official and, you know, he's going after his goals and he's like, he wants to learn about getting better at networking with high status people. And I'm like, okay, well, here's a good book for you. And I put it on, I have it on my book list already and I reference it, send him the link to the book list and he's buying it. And so guess what? That book right there. Is— oh my God, this— if you guys have never read this book, it's so crazy because last week I was really thinking about the book. Yeah, this book is called— let's get on the book list too.

What is it called?

I encourage every single person here to read this book because it's going to teach you— if, if it's not going to teach you anything, one thing it'll teach you is persistence. Persistence is key. Okay, I'm gonna share with you guys a story before I say the book. So the book— so when it comes to this, this guy, okay, it's about a man, a man from Hollywood. And this guy hit one of his goals. He had a dream. He had a dream one day, and he told his wife, he told his wife his dream. But his dream was about— and this was like years back— his dream was about taking Elvis Presley on tour. This guy was a nobody. And he had a dream taking Elvis Presley on tour. So one day he just decides, all right, I got to do that. I got to take Elvis Presley on tour and I'm going to just try to figure it out. He calls Elvis Presley's manager. Day 1, that guy just blows him off. He was like, no, you're not doing it. Every single day for 365 days, he called. Every single day he called Elvis Presley's manager, and then on the 365th day, one year later, the guy says, all right, you, are you serious? Are you, are you serious about taking Elvis Presley on tour? Because I don't know who you are. I don't know anything about you, but you've been calling me for 365 days. So if you are serious about it, in the next 24 hours, you're gonna gimme a $1 million check. $1 million check. You get that to me on my desk in 24 hours, you'll be able to take Elvis Presley on tour. Okay, this guy's name is Jerry Weintraub. His book, When I Stop— When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead. That's his book, When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man. Jerry Weintraub, right here. Okay, this book right here. That guy took Elvis Presley on tour. He found a way to get a 24, uh, he found a way within 24 hours to get a $1 million check. This was, I don't even know what year, I forgot what year this is, but a million dollars back then was a lot of money. Okay? It was a lot of money. This guy figured out a way. Persistence. If anything, if you feel like you need some motivation or some inspiration, or you want to just like read a good book, When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead. That book right here. Okay? That book is so powerful and it's just the stories within, the stories within. It'll help you in your goals. It'll help you in your goals and dreams. I guarantee it. This right here, going back to Atomic Habits, then we gotta go. If This Then That, going back to triggers. If I, so talking about the sign, right? Start each day with a grateful heart. If I see this sign, then what? Then what happens? If this, then that. Then what happens to me? Everything that you do. If you drink alcohol, if I drink alcohol, then this will happen, right? If I drink water, then this will happen. What that talks about, the subtle details of habits, Atomic Habits, highly recommend. It talks about if this, then that. In your business. If I do a piece of content, then this may happen, right? It's about setting these systems up though. It's about if this one, then that two, if this three, then that four, if this five, then that six. This is step-by-step instructions on how to create a system. If I do this, then I do that. Now, does it work? Implement the 3 and 7 step process. You know, that's just part of systems. That's part of creating the system, figuring out the data, understanding the feedback, talking to each other, talking to your team. If the— does this work? Communication. Does this system work? Does this resource help you? Does this tool help you? Trello. Trello is a free project management tool, right? That is something that, that works. You know, it might not work for you, but it depends on your situation. CapCut video editing software. CapCut is what I use to do video editing for short-form content. Guess what? It works. Okay. Adobe Premiere on the, the desktop. That's what I use. I don't like it, but it works. Okay. And that's just something I learned. But again, there's always gonna be a learning curve for every single system that you implement. But what system do you need to implement? Like, what is it that you need to do? What step-by-step instruction do you need to set up? Like, what is the things that are gonna work that's gonna help you decrease the time and energy and increase the output, right? There's many different ways that we can do it, but again, if there's questions, then boom, you'll get the answers. That right there is about setting systems, the concept of it, understanding the principles, understanding that you're not too good to be, to be setting up systems. Okay? All of us need to set up systems in our life no matter what. We all have to do it. Now, depending on how your life looks, depending on the systems that you create, is it working for you, right? It's gonna be painful in the beginning. It'll be painful in the beginning because you're gonna slow down right now. You're gonna slow down to set up systems to speed up, to go after your goals and dreams. It's gonna help you go faster, but you gotta take the time to set the systems up. I encourage to do just 20 minutes a day, 18 minutes max, do an 18-minute timeframe. Time, just you set your alarm, 18 minutes, sit down, set it up. If you really wanna dive deeper, do thinking time, sit down, set aside time if you can to think for 1 hour. For me, if I really wanna think, I need to wake up at 4:00 AM or I just go to sleep very late. But at the, at the end of the day, I don't encourage it because at least for myself, because I'm already exhausted, I'm tired. You know, I'm, I can't think properly. I can't think through, I can't think through things. I can't think bigger when I'm exhausted. That's why first thing in the morning, the sun's not even up yet. You beat the sun. Guess what? Now time to think. Okay. Time to think. So I hope this was helpful. This is just about setting systems. We didn't go into specifics because again, it depends on your situation. It depends on what you need, right? I'm not gonna go into specifics if, if there's not a specific question for the need. So when it comes to systems about the concepts, setting bigger goals for yourself, setting those triggers, right? Setting up what works for you, what's going to be a resource center for everyone on your team, for your people, for your company, for your business, for your employees. What are those systems? How can you decrease the time that you're in to increase the output that when you're out, right? How can you do things without you? How can you move the needle forward without you? What systems and step-by-step processes do you need to put in place so that way everything is running smooth? The train is moving forward, right? The engine is running with good oil. Like, what is it? Did you want to add to that?

No.

Oh, okay. I thought you did.

If you guys want to, call to action, maybe set a system for yourself. Like, what is something that you do every day, right? And it could be IPAs. Right? If you're going after a goal and we're going to be Thrive-specific, what is the IPA, right? What is the IPA and where is that in your daily method of operation and how do you systemize it so that no matter what, it gets done every day, right? Like every day we wake up, we Thrive first 30 minutes of our day. What's the next thing that you're going to do, right? And if you say that you don't have time, would waking up an extra 30 minutes just to knock out your income-producing activities that is going to attribute to your bigger goal and then going on with the rest of your daily life? Is that going to help you? Is— you know what I mean? Like when I first started this business, I had 4 other businesses. I just bought my second house. I have 2 kids. I could have been like, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I was busy. Thrive was my 5th business. 5, 5. 5th business, just bought my 2nd house. I have 2 kids. It took me only 30 minutes. I was like, I only have 30 minutes a day to work on this. But if I can do this, just like how I can thrive the first 30 minutes of my day, if I can do my income-producing activities, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the first start of my day, I would have done something that did not take a long time that I implemented in the very beginning of my day. And the compounding effect of doing that every single day, day in, day out, just the first 30 minutes of your day or like the second 30 minutes of your day, it'll get you so much further than you could have even imagined. And the same amount of time that you would have spent in the bathroom or watching a show or, you know, I don't know. I don't know what you guys do, right? But little things in your day to day consistently can add up to such big things. And you guys will never know, like, how far it can— how far that little system can go. There's a reason why people do it, and there's a reason why the best of the best do it 5 times a day plus, right? In every nook and cranny, it becomes instinctual. That could be a system that you set up for this business specifically. So when people tell me they're busy, I'm like, you don't know what busy is, right? How, how did I manage so many things? I had systems in place for my life, my kids, my schedule, my home, and each and every single business. This business, I swear to you guys, is one of the most fun and the most easiest businesses I have ever done in my life. Like, how else do you build something and leverage so much resources and time. I don't have to think about any of the backend stuff— building websites, shipping, manufacturing, licensing, legal, accounting. I don't have to think about anything. In all my other businesses, I have to think of all those things, but this is so easy. Just 30 minutes of your day, create a system for yourself to just work on the IPAs and just do it and get so good at it that eventually in every nook and cranny of your day, morning to night, you can actually fit it in. Yeah, that's one system.

And not only that, right? Like, think— don't think how, think who. Don't think how, think who. Instead of saying, how am I going to do this? How am I going to create the system? How— say, who can help me create the system? Who can create the system for me? Who has the knowledge and resources? Who can do it? That's what you want to do. That's the big shift right there. Because again, when I last episode talked about scaling, Talked about how can it's, you know, marketing, operations, scale. How can you scale? I said talent acquisition. It's about who, who do you know that will help you get to the next level? Who do you know that will help set your systems up? Who do you know that has the knowledge, the information, the resources to help you set up the system, to help you scale, to help you go faster? To help you get bigger goals, you know, achieve bigger goals, to help you get better views, whatever the case may be. Always think about who, you know, because there's someone out there who has the talent, who has the knowledge, who has the information, who has the expertise. Are you attracting them into your life? Who is that person, right? So that's everything right there. There's Yeah, we gotta go. There's many different tactics, okay? There's many different tools. I can— I have a whole entire list. What I'm going to be doing is on the website is I'm going to be adding a blog and it's going to have a list of resources to links to all the systems, to all the softwares that we use, right? For example, with— let's say, for example, with payroll, if you have employees, what do you use for payroll? I did not want to use Paychex, okay? But we used it and I didn't like it. Like I said I would. So instead we switched to something called Gusto, right? I'm going to have the link for Gusto. We use Gusto to do our payroll, right? So we pay our employees through Gusto. What— how do you do payment processors for international people, for international contractors, right? If for those of you who are going to start to onboard or enlist help from the Philippines or from India or from Mexico, right? Or from whatever country you want to hire a video editor from, right? How are you going to pay them? What are the laws and regulations that you need to abide by? There's many different things when you want to go bigger, when you want to decrease your input, increase your output. You got to learn all that stuff. You got to carve out some time to learn about what's out there. How are you going to operate your business? How are you going to go bigger, right? So it just depends on what you want. It depends on your ambition. It depends on your goals and dreams. It depends on you, on if you're coachable, if you are willing to learn, if you're willing to be a student. It depends on how you're gonna be just learning and then applying, right? There's many different aspects to this, but this is just one of them. So it's 7:10. 8 is that number. That's a good number. That's a money number. So I hope you guys have an amazing day. Systems, okay? Understand that systems is everything. Systems is your foundation. If you do not have a system in place, and you're just continuously working, working, working, working without any consciousness, you know, to create a system, then I'm telling you right now, you're working harder and not smarter. Let's start to work harder and smarter together. Set up the systems, create them, and if you have any questions, let us know. Okay. Hope you guys have an amazing day. We love you all. Take care.

Love you guys.

Bye.