1 - Systematization

Alright, so we are about to go through one of the most impactful slides and videos of the entire program. Systemization is an absolutely essential element to growing, scaling, and providing yourself with ultimate freedom through your business. So before we get into the nitty gritty, I want to share some of the kind of foundational concepts that systemization is based around. So regardless of how old you are or

your projected life expectancy or your family's heritage, there are a limited number of decisions that you're going to make before you die. And that number could be 10, it could be 1000, it could be 100,000, it could be a million. It doesn't really matter. But what is so critical about this is that you can either choose to spend these limited decisions on trivialities, like what am I

going to where to work? What am I going to buy for lunch? And speaking in terms of your business, what are we going to assign this job to? Who are we going to market our services to? Or you can spend these limited, precious decisions on how you're going to change the world through your business. And what systemization provides is it provides you with the freedom to spend

those limited decisions on only income and impact generating activities. And guys, look, this is a core principle to the accelerator program. This is what all of our content is focused around. We are in this business to provide you with one, financial stability, but two, a legacy. We want every single activity that you perform in your business to contribute to one of those two things. It's that simple.

Just a quick note before we dive in, systems, processes, protocol, standard operating procedures, those are all the same thing. And operating system, that is slightly different in the way that we use it. Basically an operating system is comprised of the above elements. So your business operating system would contain a large number of systems and processes and that kind of thing. So that was just a quick thing

that I wanted to share before we dive in. So here is the problem with most business owners, not just freelancers, with most business owners, most small business owners, that kind of thing. Most of them are sailboats without systems and structure. And as you can see in this nice little graphic here, you cannot build a powerful world-changing machine without systems and structures. It's just that simple. So the

solution to this is to provide those operating system. It's to create that operating system that this machine requires. Every procedure and task within your business must have a process, a protocol, whatever you want to call it. It's just absolutely essential to take your business to the next level. Because again, we're building machines and machines cannot be built without operating systems and operating systems cannot be built without

systems, without structures. And again, systemization is the secret to massive scale and ultimate freedom as a business owner. Without systems, you're reinventing the wheel over and over, wasting invaluable time, energy, and resources. And as you guys know, your focus, your time, your energy, those are invaluable resources that as a freelancer trying to make the transition to a business owner or a small business owner trying to make

the transition to a larger business owner, you cannot be spending your time on invaluable tests. Again, guys, we have limited decisions that we're going to make before we die. And without these systems, you're going to be recreating these processes and systems over and over again without documenting them. And that is what just sucks brain power out of you and it just leads to massive overwhelm. And again,

when you have these systems, you can scale and you have ultimate freedom within your business because you're able to delegate workout and scale the business. You're able to eliminate overwhelm and overwhelm most often comes from not having systems in place. For example, if you have 100 different tasks, but you have no systems in place for how to deal with those tasks, you're going to be overwhelmed and

that overwhelm is going to kill your creativity, productivity, and high performance. Lastly, when you have systems, you're able to spend time on the business, not in the business. And guys, this is so key. To grow a business, you can't just be delivering and meeting your clients demands. You have to be thinking strategically and thinking at a high level and again, spending time on the business, thinking about

strategic partnerships, thinking about product development and thinking about hiring, thinking about scaling, you cannot just be in the business because again, it will prevent your growth. All right, so now we are going to get into the nitty gritty of creating lean and effective systems. So it's a very simple. Every task that you perform, it has a starting point and an end point. It doesn't matter if this

is a small task like delivering a project to a client or a project, you know, where a project has multiple phases. But to get started with creating a lean effective system, first identify point A, which is a starting point, and then identify point B, which is the end point. Then once you do this, there's of course going to be milestones and key actions that occur from point

A to point B. For example, if we're talking about a website design project, point A would be the client saying, okay, here's my payment, let's get started. Point B would be delivering that project to the client and having them do a happy dance as we'll get into a little bit later. But in between point A and B, there are milestones that occur. There's a discovery call. There

are design specs that get mapped out. There are mock-up designs that get delivered. There's web development that gets carried out. And then there's the launch phase of the project. So once you have the starting point, you need to identify the key milestones that occur in between those starting points and end points. So once you have documented this, then you want to go back and you want to

group these milestones into phases. This is very important because having phases really helps you clearly visualize and identify the different stages of the project and identify the different requirements of each stage of the project. I imagine many of you guys have a vague sense of this already, but we're going to dive in really, really deep and just by the end of this, provide you with a framework

to create incredibly robust systems that, again, map everything out. All right, so now that you have basically created the high-level structure, the skeleton for your system, you need to add granular details and instructions for each and every item from point A to point B. And this is the most important part. It's, again, first you have to identify the point A and the point B and you have

to identify the key actions and then group them in the phases, but the way that we are going to be sharing our process for creating systems is that at the end of this system, you want to have such a great system and documentation for a task or project that you can provide your documentation to a highly intelligent five-year-old and they can understand what to do. Obviously, this

is a bit of a hyperbole. You're not going to be consulting with too many five-year-olds to run your business, at least I hope not, although I'm not going to write it off. You're all very smart and capable, so maybe you'll surprise me, but this is basically just a metaphor. You want to have such amazing clarity and detail in your systems that basically a random person off the

street could go through your system and have a good idea for how to deliver on this task or project. So that is a very key part of creating these lean, effective systems. So every system, it should have standalone documentation, but if you want to make them even more powerful and effective, you can include walkthrough videos. And what walkthrough videos are is they're essentially just a video, you

know, basically exactly what I'm doing right now. It's a screen recorded video where you walk the viewer through the steps that you have outlined for your system and then you demonstrate live how they would implement this system that you have provided. This walkthrough video combined with amazing documentation is truly, truly a game changer for your business. And again, you don't need to have a video walkthrough for

every single system, but for the more complex systems and projects, you absolutely should do what you can to have this in an ideal world. You should have it for every system in your business. And the way that you do that is for Mac users, you can use QuickTime's screen recording feature, which is what I'm using right now. And for non-Mac users, you can use tools like Jing

or Screencast-Omatic. Something that I will add onto this is Jing and Screencast. They both have very nice tools for easily uploading your videos to the cloud. So whereas with QuickTime, it's a very easy to use native app. You do have to manually upload the content, whereas with Jing or Screencast, you can just automatically do it through the app. So that's up to you. Play around, see what

works best for you. So once you have your system created, you want to just review it and make sure that you've everything covered in as much detail as you need. And once that's done, once you've gone through, dyed your teeth, crossed your eyes, I flipped that around. Clearly, my system for referencing lame examples needs some work. But anyways, once you have that done, you're going to want

to test out your system. So you can do this in a few different ways, and we're going to touch on this a little bit later in the hiring video. But just have a trusted team member or business partner review it. It's really that simple. And you don't want to give them too much context. You want to just say, look, here's the system. Please go through it, implement

it, make sure that everything's good to go. You want to request good, honest feedback as well, excuse me. So for hiring, again, you can use these systems to ensure that they work. And then once you've done that, you can actually use these systems to vet your candidates and potential hires. Again, we're going to touch on this a little bit later. And we're also going to touch on

how to build in systematic reviews of these systems. But right now, this is more of an introduction and the how to later on, we'll get into the systematic review process. All right, so now that you have the understanding that you need to go out and start creating systems and documenting and start creating just really quality processes for your business, it's time to start thinking about systemizing your

entire business. So here's how you do this. You need to track how you spend your time every damn day down to the minute. If you're not already doing this, you absolutely must do this, especially in the current stages that you're in. We're trying to grow, we're trying to level up and you need to be able to audit your time down to the minute to do that. How

you do this? Use toggle or a preferred time tracker app, download it on your computer and mobile device and start yesterday. Again, guys, this is so, so key and you just need to get into the habit of doing it. It takes a few days to get adjusted as does anything. But once you get used to just going into your computer, hitting that little button, tracking your time,

it's going to be like clockwork. Secondly, throughout your day, you want to keep a running list of all recurring tasks that you perform on a daily basis. So you can use Evernote or a preferred note app, but it's super, super important that you store this information in one central location. So again, as you go through your day, you want to prime yourself at the beginning of the

day to say, look, I'm going to keep a note of all my recurring tasks and add it to this Evernote document. These are going to be things like checking email. These are going to be things like delivering briefs to team members. These are going to be things like messaging clients. These are going to be things like reviewing team members' work. These are going to be things like

creating a strategy for a growth campaign, whatever. Every single thing that you do needs to be audited. And again, you want to have a recurring task list. Using toggle, this is going to be a lot easier because again, you're already tracking your time. You're already tracking your tasks. So now it's just a matter of taking that information, auditing your tasks, and then adding it to a single

recurring task list. So guys, you're going to want to block out at least, at least, at least two to four hours per week on your schedule to go ahead and create systems and processes for these recurring tasks. This is super, super important. So again, you really need to be able to visualize how you're spending your time. And once you have that information, you need to go ahead

and block timeout. Make it clockwork, make it its own system, right? So that's what this is, right? Right now, I want you to go on to your calendar. I want you to identify at least two to four hours on your calendar in which you can spend time creating these systems for your business. This is so, so important. I would recommend you do it as much as maybe

10 hours a week if you have that time and flexibility. But again, guys, this is so key and this is absolutely needed to grow and scale to the next level. Another thing that you're going to want to start creating is you want to have templates for all of your internal and external communications that you can continually refine and iterate on. So what I recommend, and we'll include

some documentation for this, but what I recommend doing is as you start communicating with your team or with your clients, you know, start identifying those touch points, right? You know, there's going to be a point where you share a brief with your team member. You know, that's a communication touch point. There's going to be a point where you deliver a deliverable to your client. That's another touch

point. And you want to make sure that you have templates for each of these project touch points because again, what's the point of going in and writing a new message every single time to a client for the same damn thing, right? Like if you're going to be delivering a wireframe for your next 10 clients, all you need to do is create a structure for how you deliver

that, the wording that you use, the messaging that you use, the instructions that you use, and then you're good. So that's something that a lot of people miss, but it's super, super important. You know, these are going to be things like email templates, these are going to be things like internal team directions, that sort of thing. So it's important that you include this information again in another

central location so you can continually refine and iterate. So this is majorly important. Yes, you're running a business and there's a ton of things that you can be doing. But what you need to do is you need to prioritize your value delivery because that is how you get paid, right? If you're a marketer and you get paid for creating growth marketing campaigns and then implementing those campaigns

on social media, you need to make sure that the first thing that you do, the first system that you create is your system for doing those two things, right? So this needs to be top, top priority because look, you know, this is how you make money so it needs to be the first thing that you systemize. It doesn't make sense for you to spend a week or

two creating a robust system for your team payment process. Meanwhile, you're getting hammered by your clients because you're having to recreate all of these processes and systems and instructions and you're not getting paid, you know, you're struggling because you don't have that system down. But again, prioritize how you make money, prioritize your value delivery, all right? This is another thing and I hope you are starting to

see a recurring theme here. You know, gone are the days after this program. Gone are the days of you having multiple to-do lists, of you having multiple copies of a single document or you having multiple copies of a single strategy. Everything needs to be stored in one central location and for your business operations, it is absolutely, absolutely critical that you have all of this information in one

single place because again, guys, we're working to eliminate overwhelm. We're working to eliminate extra clicks, eliminate extra brain power. And the easiest way to do that is to have everything in one central location, ideally in a single document. So start there and again, as you build, keep everything in one place. All right, so now we're going to get into how I built the operating system for my

agency. And the operating system specifically that I'm referring to is the creative design project, primarily website designs, and we'll get into that in just a minute. But before we get into the nitty gritty, again, I want to share with you some context about the situation that I was in before systemizing my business and all of the amazing things that happened after I systemized my business. So I

was hungry to scale as a freelancer, but I couldn't. You know, I wanted to build a business, but I couldn't. And I couldn't because I lacked structure and I was spread too thin. I had worked my ass off to get more than I think I was working on about $14,000 or $15,000 worth of work, but I wasn't getting paid because the products were delayed. I couldn't deliver

because again, I didn't have the structure and I was doing everything myself. I couldn't delegate work out because I didn't have these systems again. And I went into massive debt. So that was the beginning of this year. I started in massive debt. And just, you know, for me, as far as a professional, since I had quit my job, this was rock bottom. I was so hungry to

have the impact that I wanted to have in the world, but I could not because I didn't have the structure and systems that I needed. So now it's about six months. It's a little bit. It's about seven months, but it's about seven months after I've systemized my business. And I just want to share some of the major wins that some of you guys may have already known.

But again, I just want to hammer this home because it's so critical that you focus on systemization as a way to scale. So my agency has smashed our goal of 100k revenue. We're projected to hit over 300k by the end of the year. Hopefully more. I'm hungry. We're pushing hard. I've hired a full time director of operations to manage the day to day. And because of him,

I'm spending less than five hours a week on the delivery of the services of my business. The only time that I'm really investing right now is just high level checks and updates with him as well as business development strategies, which are going to be used to massively scale my business and guys, that's why it's so critical that you focus on this right now. I've launched two of

my own products. One of them is this program, the six figure agency accelerator. And the second of them is a design accelerator program to help people learn design skills. But I've already launched two of my own products within two months of not within two months, but basically once I systemize and I was able to scale up to six figures within a few months of that, I was

able to create my own products. So guys, again, once you're able to create that value in the marketplace, you're able to become scarce in the marketplace, you can then productize your knowledge. And you know, the first hundred K is the hardest is it is fucking hard. The first one K is super hard as well. But once you again have made yourself scarce in the marketplace, you have

knowledge that people want and you can turn that into products and programs as I have. And lastly, we're preparing to hit seven figures by June, 2018. That's an ambitious goal, but I know that we can do it. And I'm gearing all of my efforts to doing just that. So again, beginning of the year, I started in massive debt, could barely pay rent. And now I'm preparing to

hit seven figures by this time next year. So here's how we did it. And that's the different hunger media logo because it's sexy as hell. So I want to do include it because why not? All right. So here is how I did it. So first of all, I identified the deliverable that we were providing. So that was website design projects. That was how we were getting paid.

That's how I knew how to get paid. But I didn't have the structure down. So I then identified point A and point B of a successful website design project. So point A was the client pays me and you know, that payment marks the beginning of the project. And then point B is that the website is launched and the client, excuse me, the client does a happy dance

because he's just so fucking pumped that his website looks amazing and generates crazy results and you know, I'm getting a bit traumatic, but you get the point. So once I had identified point A and point B, I then identified key phases of the project. So there's a discovery phase. There's a pre-design phase. There's a design phase. There's a development phase and there's a launch phase. So you

guys can do this right now. You know, this is not super difficult, but many of you probably have not taken the time to sit down and map this out, which you absolutely must do again to grow and scale and in systemize. So once you have the key phases down, then this is where it gets a bit tedious because you have to dive in to a massive amount

of detail for each and every action required from point A to point B. But look guys, you know, if you're just getting started with this, you're not going to have a fully robust operating system tomorrow. You may not even have one next week. It took me about two months, yeah, about two months to really create this complete operating system. And you know, it requires real life testing,

it requires running through real life projects. But again, it's just so important that you have this beginning structure so that you can continually iterate, iterate, iterate. So this is at a high level exactly what I did to grow my business and create a robust operating system for my business. So, now guys, I want to show you exactly what I was working with in those earlier iterations of

my operating system. So this should be really helpful for you guys to visualize everything that I'm talking about. So I'm not going to spend too much time kind of walking you through each and every one. But basically, you get the picture. You understand that there's a discovery phase, there's a pre-kick-off call, there's a kickoff call, and then a post-kick-off call. So I imagine that you guys have

a very similar structure. And again, it's just a matter of visualizing it, documenting it. So I'm just going to walk you guys through the other phases as well. So here we have the design phase, which includes moodboarding, wireframing, copywriting, approval, mock-up design. Again, this is a very early iteration, and we actually changed this up quite a bit moving forward. But again, you can already see how great

this can be for eliminating overwhelm, because again, you're just looking through at a high level and understanding, okay, the design phase includes moodboarding, wireframing, copywriting, okay, moodboarding includes this, this, this, okay, I need a team member for this, this, this. It's just so helpful to visualize these project operations and in business operations. So next we have development phase. As you can see, we're working primarily with WordPress,

so that was included in the process, pre-development, development, post-development, that sort of thing. All right, so as you can see, they're a great starting point, but they wouldn't pass the five-year-old tests. I have since provided a much more granular, step-by-step level of detail for each and every action that's required to deliver on my projects. So I want to show you guys what that looks like. So here

you can see this strategic discovery phase. We have the pre-discovery call. I go down to as much detail as the notes that we are even using for the call. And then we get into the discovery call and I break down every single portion of the discovery call. You know, we're talking about the client. We're identifying their products and services, their achievements, their points of contact. We're getting

into their project objectives, we're getting into their target audience. You know, guys, this is all stuff that you guys absolutely have swimming around in your head if you don't already have it documented. But again, you need to have this level of detail. So again, you're passing that five-year-old test. You're able to provide this to somebody else to run your business for you because these are the types

of things that you're going to be delegating out to a director of operations or a project manager or something like that. So it's so important that you have this level of detail. So to kind of wrap this all up, guys, you know, without systems, you're continually reinventing the wheel. And as a lean startup, you know, maybe, I don't know if that's the right term, but as a

freelancer, as someone who's trying to take their business to the next level, you do not have time to reinvent the wheel. You just don't. You know, maybe if you're a eight-figure agency, you can, you know, hire interns to just go fuck around and get you coffee and whatever, but you're not there. You need to be very lean with your approach. You need to conserve your mental brain

power and energy like your life and success depends on it because it really does. Another thing that is so important is to change your perception of delegation. You know, it's not about hiring. It's not about delegating workout, you know, you're becoming a leader. And the way that you become a leader is by having systems in place, you know, when you have those systems in place, you can

rely on them instead of just relying on different scattered thoughts and practices, you know, you have a documented system that's proven to work. And once you have that, then you can spend your time becoming somebody that people want to work for, you know, we're not in this to boss people around, we're in this to empower other people. And this is a really great, great quote that really

changed my perspective of being a business owner and making that mental transition from freelancer to business owner. Because guys, look, that is a massive, massive mindset shift. As you know, you know, that's a shift that goes something like, Hey, I'm a freelancer. Yes, I can deliver this in a week and I'm going to get it back to you as soon as possible. And you're going to be

super happy. And yes, anything else, can I get you a coffee? You know, there's that freelancer approach versus the business owner approach, which is I'm the business owner. We know what the hell we're doing. We are the experts. This is our process. This is how long it takes. This is how long revisions take. This is when you can expect that deliverable. So guys, think about the two

different personas there, right? Like which is more powerful, which is going to allow you to bring in more budget and higher revenue for your projects. So again, you know, you don't build business. You build people and people build business. So guys, look, it's so important that you have these systems in place so that you can lead and you can empower other people to help you grow with

you, to help grow your business. But again, you want to grow them personally and professionally. So lastly, or actually I think I have one more or two more, your goal with all of this is to create the world's greatest operating system that contains all of your business operations. When I was getting started at the beginning of this year, and I was just hungry to get this operating

system down because I knew that this operating system would lead to massive growth, which it did, I was just so hungry to just create a Bible. I just wanted to create a Bible for my projects. And that's exactly what I have now. And that's exactly why I'm able to work less than five hours a week and hire out the majority, pretty much all of the value delivery.

So guys, look, again, everything needs to contribute to creating an amazing operating system. So this is a concept that is very directly relevant to this lesson in systemization, but it's also relevant in, it's a core concept in the development of this program and the development of your impact and your legacy in the world. So guys, your process is your unique sales proposition, but you just don't know

it yet. And what that means is the way that you run your business, the way that you interact with your clients, the way that you interact with your team members, the way that you perform your research, the way that you deliver your project deliverables, the way that you guide your QA tester through your website, that is your unique sales proposition. All of those little intricacies are what

contribute to something so much greater and something so much more powerful. And guys, look, your process is what makes up your storm piercer, right? You know, you are an embodiment of your storm piercer and your process is the Bible in which your storm piercer relies on, right? So you guys are creating blue oceans with your businesses. And the process that you create for those businesses are invaluable

and they are what make you so unique in the marketplace. So guys, look, this is a core, core concept of again, not only systemization, but of the entire program because the unique value, the unique experience, the unique skills, the unique personality that you bring to the table through your business is what's going to take your business to unimaginable heights and contribute to your legacy in a way

that you never could have imagined. So guys, that is a wrap for the systemization video and training and I hope, hope, hope you are excited as I am to see the incredible results that you guys are going to deliver.