Transform Your Business into a Well-Oiled Machine

You know that super cringe saying:

”Don’t work in the business; work on the business.”

Well, just like most cringe sayings; it’s true.

↳ Especially if you want to scale your business.

Yesterday we went over the 3 easy steps to setting up great SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures).

If you missed that email you can read it here.

I mentioned my big mistake when first starting my online basketball training business:

Waiting too long to get good systems in place.

This left me as the bottleneck… because either I had to do everything myself, or everything had to pass through me to make sure it was done ‘right’.

Which is about as fun as a colonoscopy (haven’t had one yet, but damn…)

So why’d I wait so long to get the systems in place?

Great question.

And only one that I can confidently answer in hindsight.

(It’s a little embarrassing to be honest…)

For starters - I had no idea what I was doing when I first started the business 12+ years ago…

I was flying by the seat of my pants just trying to pay down my ignorance tax as quickly as I could (this is where mentors really helped me).

On top of that…

I thought no one would do the job as well as I would.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt this way?

* raises both hands *

Here’s the thing…

IT’S USUALLY TRUE

Which means, you’re sort of right.

Here’s what I’ve come to learn from touching the hot stove too many times…

It burns.

Not sure where I was going with that,

But YES:

Some of the people you hire in your business might not be as good as you at doing the ‘thing’.

And YES:

They might not care as much as you do about the ‘thing’ being done perfect.

At first, this can be tough to come to terms with.

(Downright excruciating for a perfectionist…)

But here’s what I’ve learned…

Putting people in positions to follow SOP’s, and having the job completed to 80% or more of your wildly high satisfaction criteria, is more effective and sustainable than trying to be Super(wo)man and do it all yourself.

^ this is another one of those “ask me how I know”s

When you begin to hand the reigns off to employees (or contractors) there’s a phase of what some entrepreneurs feel as a “loss of control”

Because you’re not the one doing everything anymore.

This is to be expected.

Once you begin to install good systems into your business, and hire a team to complete the tasks that eat up your creative energy - LIFE GETS BETTER.

You’re going to have to trust me on this…

LIFE GETS BETTER

↳ You no longer have to answer every customer service email.

↳ Or edit every piece of creative for the ads.

Yes, you can (and should) have input and continue to refine the systems and SOP’s so that the output gets closer and closer to that 100% satisfaction goal.

(And this will happen over time…)

But when you’re first starting out implementing systems in your business it’s an iteration process:

Install SOP, see what the output looks like, refine SOP, see what the next output looks like, refine SOP, etc.

It’s a process.

But the strongest companies I know have the strongest systems.

Remember:

Systems run the business, and people run the systems.

Let’s see, what else does this do for you…

Oh, right, SCALE.

By implementing good systems in your business you become like a well-oiled machine.

One that is consistent.

^ this is important

You can increase your advertising budget, because you can predictably generate revenue and profit on the back end.

This my friend is how you scale.

Forget dancing like a circus bear on IG reels all day hoping the algorithm chooses you.

Install systems instead.

Increase input (ad spend) → Increase output (profit)

Eventually, what you’ll begin to notice is the people you hire get better and better and better…

Until one day you look around, and the company is full of people that are better at what they do than you would be.

^ this doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s a damn good feeling when it does.

So, what did we learn today?

1. Adam touches hot stoves too often…?

2. Install systems in your business to create a predictable well-oiled business machine.

3. Once you have this predictable well-oiled business machine, you can really scale profit. And have fun.

Phew.

That was a good one.

I hope this helps.

- Adam

P.S - enjoying these emails? Hit reply with the word STOVE to let me know, please. I could use some external validation.