Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, so welcome back to Bookworm.

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I've got a very special guest here filling in for Joe

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Bealig till we figure out what this is going to look like.

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Well, filling in for this episode.

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So welcome to Bookworm, Sean Blanc.

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Yay!

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What's up, guys?

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Gals, happy to be here.

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Thanks for having me.

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I'm really excited to chat with you.

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Number one, because the book today,

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I feel like this is kind in your wheelhouse.

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So I think that we'll have a real great conversation

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about this.

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But also, I know you are an avid reader.

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I've seen your bookshelves.

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And while I may disagree with the way

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that you organize your books on some of your bookshelves,

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I know you read a lot.

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So you're the first person I thought of when

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I was thinking about, who could I get to fill in here?

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And glad to have you on the show.

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Oh, awesome.

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Thanks.

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Yeah, I feel like even just going through--

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I read the e-mail years ago.

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But even I was kind of going through it again in prep for today.

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I was like, oh my gosh, I have gone through this journey,

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the hard, painful, slow way.

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And so I think even just the chance

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to bring just some personal story into this book,

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talking about it, but also just the hard experiences

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of being a technician.

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But from the creative side, instead

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of from the baker's side or from the plumber's side.

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But as a quote unquote, an indie creative.

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And then learning how to transform that into a business.

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And then actually learning how to be a business owner

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and running and managing a business and thinking

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with systems and not thinking in wartime leadership,

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abdication, all that stuff.

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So I'm excited to get into some of this stuff and whatnot.

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I've never listened to the show.

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So if I completely derail everything, sorry in advance.

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Or you're welcome.

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So who knows?

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And just for clarification, Sean had told me this before we

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get record, you don't listen to any shows.

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It's not that Bookworm didn't make the cut.

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It's just that you don't listen to podcasts,

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which I got to respect that.

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I mean, you're the polka sky.

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I did well, I don't have a commute.

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And I have like a three minute commute.

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And so all of my commuting time is either silence

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because it's my chance to think.

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Or I'm on Marco Polo catching up with friends.

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I'm now like a Marco Polo guy.

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So nice.

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I like podcasts though.

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I should start my own podcast, but I'm not a podcast listener.

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You totally should bring back Sean today.

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I'd subscribe.

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Yes.

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Oh my gosh, old school.

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Yeah, so a little bit of context here.

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The reason I think that you were the obvious choice

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when you were thinking about EMITH, which is all

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about business systems, is I have seen you go through this.

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And the reason I picked the book is I'm starting to go through it

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myself as an independent creator recently

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in the last several months.

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But I worked full time for you for a while.

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And I've kind of seen you go through this journey.

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And I respect the way that you did it.

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So I'm kind of curious your perspective on the lessons

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that you learned and maybe I haven't got some distance

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from this book.

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You know, what are the things that you have gleaned from it?

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What maybe didn't line up with your expectations,

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stuff like that.

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But before we get into that, just a couple of quick things.

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I have to announce because it's my last opportunity

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before it goes live.

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The Obsidian University cohort.

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I'm kind of terrible still at this self-promotion stuff, Sean.

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So I've dragged my feet on announcing this.

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By the time this goes live, you'll

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have a couple of days before it starts.

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But the cohort, too, is significantly upgraded.

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Some of the feedback I got with the first cohort was,

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we want more of the values-based, productivity stuff,

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going deep on certain things.

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So I've kind of revamped the whole thing

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and broken it down into four different weeks, which

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talk about the PKM stack, idea and information management,

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task and project management, and then journaling and reflection,

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which I think is kind of the key.

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You've got to take a step back and realize what's working,

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what's not, make adjustments, stuff like that.

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So if you're interested in that at all,

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you can go to obsidianuniversity.com/cohort.

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I will have a special code in the show notes, probably bookworm,

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but I haven't made it yet, which will get you 50 bucks off.

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The price is raised this one.

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But it also includes a year of access

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to the obsidianuniversity community,

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and then also an obsidian 101 course

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that I'm putting together, which is basically

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adjust these settings and do this so you can hit the ground

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running when you join the cohort.

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You can get access to that self-paced course immediately.

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The other thing I want to mention here

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is that it's September, so that's childhood cancer awareness

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month and our friends over at Relay FM

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do this fundraiser every year.

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Well, this year I figured out how to set up my own campaign

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for bookworm.

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I have no idea if anybody else is going to contribute to this

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or not, but I do every year.

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I know Sean, you do every year.

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This is definitely a worthwhile cause.

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We know somebody who has benefited

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from the hospitality of St. Jude personally,

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and just kind of a heart-wrenching story

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of what they had to go through,

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and the really amazing thing about St. Jude

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is that they don't charge their patients a dime

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for any of the treatment, any of the travel,

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which when you've got a kid who's got cancer,

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like you don't want to have to worry about that stuff,

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I can only imagine what that would be like.

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I don't want to have to go through it,

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but for people who do have to go through it,

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St. Jude is a phenomenal place.

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And they share all their research.

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That's the amazing part.

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I mean, like there's all these companies

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that patent their medications,

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they can make a bunch of money on it.

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Well, St. Jude does all this research,

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and they've made a huge impact in the survival rate

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for kids with cancer.

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And then they just share it for free with everybody else,

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'cause they just want to eradicate the disease,

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until no kid dies from cancer.

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So really amazing cause.

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There'll be a link to that in the show notes as well.

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Sean, I'll give you an opportunity at the beginning here.

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I know you're working on something special

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for business owners if you want to plug that.

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That's cool too.

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Want to just share briefly about focus like a boss?

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Yeah, focus like a boss.

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If we got anyone in the space here,

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if you are a small business owner,

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especially like professional services

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and client services like your freelancer,

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you run an agency,

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running a small group in October

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that's helping small business owners

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run their full time business on part time hours.

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And so if you're interested in that,

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you can go to thefocuscourse.com/boss.

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And there'll be a link there to kick me an email

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to let me know that you're interested

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and happy to chat with you about it

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if there's still some space in the group.

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It's gonna be small group, so we'll see if there's any spots.

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But we're doing another one in January too,

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so we can always sneak into that one.

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But Mike, I want to say something too

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about your obsidian university thing.

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I heard recently, and this might even be a segue

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into what we're doing.

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This isn't in the EMET,

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but this is related to entrepreneurship.

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I heard it recently kind of related to the space

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of the professional creative

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and kind of the creative entrepreneur.

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You usually have like two genres,

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so to speak, of entrepreneurs.

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One of those genres is the idea, "prinure."

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And these are the people like the big thinkers

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and the big dreamers who like invent

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and come up with ideas.

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And then you have the how-to-prinure,

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who are the ones that like,

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"Well, here is how we can make this happen."

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And they're the systems thinkers and the idea dot connectors.

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And you need both.

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And a lot of times, like we are magnetically drawn

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often to the idea-prinures,

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because they're the ones that are casting these big pictures

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and these big visions of the future.

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And what if this and wouldn't it be cool if this?

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But then when you get to like what it is

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that they're offering you or you're kind of connected to them,

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it's very, very difficult to now apply

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any of their stuff to your life.

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You're like, "Wow, that's awesome."

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Now what?

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And the how-to-prinure is like,

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"Here's this idea, right?

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"Like that exists."

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And I have created the system and the process

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to help get you to that desired end result.

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And of course, like when you combine both of those,

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big ideas with clear how-to processes,

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then you truly have the greatest change in people's lives

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because you're able to then walk them through it,

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not just like talk about a bunch of ideas.

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And Mike, you strike me like just knowing you

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for the last close to 10 years now,

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you are a how-to-prinure.

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And one of the best ones I've ever worked with

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and known because you are so great at breaking down

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these steps and these processes and communicating them

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in a very like kind but opinionated way.

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And so I think with your Obsidian University stuff,

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people are gonna get to sit under you

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and like experience the beauty of like how well

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you can communicate and teach people

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and get people to this desired end result

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that they're trying to get to.

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And I know for you, like Obsidian is like a tool

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for getting to certain end results.

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And a lot of that is just like,

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"Here, here's the best way to do it.

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"We're gonna use Obsidian,

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"but there's so much more that you're gonna be able to impact."

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So all that to say like, you know,

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folks who are gonna be going through your stuff

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are in for a treat.

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- Thanks, man.

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I'm blushing.

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I really appreciate that.

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That's the goal obviously is to not just teach you

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how to do something but kind of the why behind it.

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So you can figure out what pieces of the systems are

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really gonna make sense for you.

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But yeah.

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- Awesome.

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Well, let's jump into the Emith.

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So this was the last book I picked before Joe had to go on

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hiatus unfortunately.

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And we're hoping that he can come back at some point.

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And in the meantime, I'm gonna try to find a few people

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who can step in and talk about books well.

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And I knew Sean could do this.

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You had mentioned you had read this before.

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But this is by Michael Gerber.

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And I don't know when it was originally published.

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It's the Emith revisited.

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So I assume there was an original Emith,

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although I didn't actually find it when I was looking online.

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But even this one, it is a little bit dated.

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Well, I shouldn't say that the principles behind it

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that are contained in the book are not necessarily dated.

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But if you're gonna judge a book by its published date

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on the inside cover, this one is not new in novel.

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But sometimes those are the best books.

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I mean, some of the books that I've gotten the most out of

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that we've read for bookworm are things like

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Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

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and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends

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and Influence People, stuff like that.

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More than more Adlers, How to Read a Book,

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Written in like 1940.

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I mean, that just has become more and more important

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in the digital age.

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But Emith is all about business systems.

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So if you're not interested in a business type book,

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I guess you can turn this one off right now.

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'Cause that's what we're gonna be talking about

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the rest of the show here.

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It is, it follows a basic format,

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like a lot of the other productivity books that we've read

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in the 179 episodes now.

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There's an introduction.

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Then their part one is the Emith

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and the American Small Business.

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There's six chapters in there,

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which kind of talk about business cycles.

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Part two is the turnkey revolution,

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a new view of business, which has three chapters.

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It talks about kind of the franchise prototype.

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And then part three is the big one,

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building a small business that works.

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This has, let's see, chapters 10 through 19 here.

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And most of them are about the individual pieces

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of a specific system that Michael Gerber talks about.

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And this is the part that I'm really anxious to get into

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because he talks about kind of like the key areas

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of a business, the org chart and the areas that people,

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you gotta have people in the right seats, right?

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And you're a different organization.

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And how do you do that when you've got a small company

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and you don't have a person for each

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of those seven different departments or whatever, right?

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So really excited to talk about your experience there.

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But let's, before we jump into the book here,

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Sean, I'll just ask, you know,

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the first time you picked this up,

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if you could go back four years ago

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or whenever you first came across this book,

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what intrigued you about it

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and kind of like what were you expecting

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to get out of it if you can remember?

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- Yeah, well, okay.

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So I'll show you here 'cause you're on a video call too,

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but I have a little pink sticky note in the front of my book.

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I do this for all the books that I buy

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and I put in there why I bought the book

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or like who I heard from it or whatever.

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And so in here, you know, it says, you know,

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recommended to me by my friend Bob during a lunch

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at a certain restaurant here in Kansas City

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that doesn't exist anymore, room 39.

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On June 2016.

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So this book was recommended to me on June 2016.

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So I bought it.

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Or then I said, you know, later recommended to my cousin

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when I was at a wedding for our other cousin.

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And so I wrote in here,

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hoping to learn about how to stop working in my business

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and to start working on my business.

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So at this point, I was about,

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when I bought this book, I was about six to nine months in

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of having my first full-time employee.

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And I was about four and a half years in

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as a full-time business owner.

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At first, I was an indie creator.

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I took my blog full-time back in 2011.

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And so the thing that struck me about the book

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was this idea of actually like the role of the business owner.

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And I'm like, I'm kind of now reframing this now,

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you know, eight years later or so in the context.

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But that the role of the business owner

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is not to do all like the worst jobs

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that no one else wants to do.

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It's to actually create this system

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that is, you know, this business, this machine, so to speak,

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that is built of assets and people and processes

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that is able to produce a consistent result

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for its customers on a consistent and regular basis.

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And like this just kind of like kind of blew my mind of like,

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okay, my job isn't necessarily like to do all the work

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inside the business, 'cause I, you know,

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I've been solo pernure for a long time

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and then like had one employee.

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And I often would feel bad like delegating stuff to him

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because it was like, well, I don't wanna do this.

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And well, gosh, it sucks that I'm gonna ask you to do it

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'cause you probably don't wanna do it either.

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And that's actually a very immature approach.

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And I've learned quite a bit since that time.

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But that was the feel.

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So for me, it was the big like motivating factor

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and the kind of the big aha moment was like,

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I need to literally think, I'm thinking about it all wrong.

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I'm thinking about it in terms of I own a job,

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which is great.

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Like I'm like, oh, cool, I have autonomy for my time.

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I can work whenever I want, but I'm still working all the time.

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You know, where is that real freedom?

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But it was, it was that mindset shift

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of actually creating like a functional machine

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that is built of systems and assets and individuals

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that we're able to do, you know, work that we're proud of

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and truly like impact our customers and our clients

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on a predictable, repeatable basis.

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- That's funny that you wrote that note about working

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on the business instead of in the business

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because when I was reading this book

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and I came across that, they used that exact phrase

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multiple times throughout the book

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and I immediately thought of you.

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I think I probably heard that like,

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I don't even know how many times during the couple of years

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that I was working with you.

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But it's interesting that that is something

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that you were looking for from the beginning

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and obviously that has stuck with you throughout the years.

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I love your idea too of like writing the actual note

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on the sticky and putting it in the book

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about where you heard about it from.

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I may need to steal that.

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I always read the physical books too.

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Physical books are better.

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Sorry, not debatable, just is.

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- Hey, not debatable, agreed.

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Well, 'cause I'll buy a book and then I feel like,

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I feel like someone recommended a book to me the other day

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and it's like, I went in to Amazon to buy it

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and I was like, you bought this book September 2018.

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I was like, oh, it's on my shelf somewhere.

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I've had it for five years.

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- That does happen.

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- That happens all the time.

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And so that's why I like to write in the sticky notes.

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Like, this is why I bought it.

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This is where I heard about it from.

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This is when I bought it.

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And there's something about like picking up

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the book and then seeing that initial motivation again.

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Like it kind of helped.

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I don't know, it's fun.

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And then how's it getting me into like,

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being remotivated to dig into the book again as well.

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So it's, yeah, it's just fun.

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- Yeah.

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All right, let's jump into the actual content here

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of the book.

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We'll tackle this by part and the first part,

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we'll just touch on real briefly.

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That's the introduction.

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It basically puts forth the four key ideas

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that he wants you to get by the end in this introduction,

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which is the EMIF, the turnkey revolution,

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the business development process.

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And then these can be applied by any small business owner

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is the last one.

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So I really just kind of hammering home that this book is

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for you if you are a small business owner.

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And I think that's important because it's easy.

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Maybe this is a, it'd be cool to get your perspective on this.

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But it seems to me that it is very easy

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to make excuses why some of these business books,

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specifically the ones that are like,

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don't make it too complicated,

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just kind of follow this format.

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And I do have my own issues with systems books.

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I think you can't just like apply them verbatim.

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You have to understand the principles

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and ultimately the best version is one

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that you tweak for yourself and you figure out

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what works, what you're gonna keep,

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what you're gonna get rid of.

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But when it comes to business systems,

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businesses, business and systems are a big part of business.

00:18:30

And so I've seen over and over and over again

00:18:33

with people who think that they are smarter

00:18:36

than the people who have achieved the results in business.

00:18:39

And they look at the system and they're like,

00:18:41

"Well, that's great.

00:18:42

"That works for you, Michael Gerber,

00:18:43

"but there's no way that would work for me because."

00:18:46

And they fill in the blank as to why their situation

00:18:50

is different.

00:18:51

And that's the biggest battle is convincing people,

00:18:54

like, no, this does actually apply to you.

00:18:57

You do have to do the hard part, right?

00:18:59

You can't just continue to do what you wanna do

00:19:02

because your situation is special and unique.

00:19:05

And yeah, you are special and unique

00:19:07

and your situation is different than a lot of other people,

00:19:10

but there are still principles that can be gleaned here.

00:19:13

And so more often than not, try them and see if they work.

00:19:17

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:19

And I think too, for a lot of business owners,

00:19:24

like when you reach kind of that breaking point

00:19:26

where you're like, okay, do more, be more, work more,

00:19:30

like this isn't working.

00:19:32

Like I, you know, there reaches a point

00:19:34

where you can no longer grow your business by brute force.

00:19:38

And you kind of just get overwhelmed

00:19:40

and exhausted and tired and frustrated and angry

00:19:43

and irritable and you go, all right,

00:19:46

well, I need to figure out how to like,

00:19:48

what am I gonna do in this business?

00:19:49

And that's where the e-mail comes in.

00:19:50

And it's like, well, okay, you need to start thinking

00:19:52

about your business as like a, you know,

00:19:55

a collection of systems and assets

00:19:58

and stop thinking about your business

00:20:00

as you putting in your 60 to 80 hours a week

00:20:05

and brute force pushing this thing uphill.

00:20:09

So it's like realizing like even just that, like, yes.

00:20:13

Like you can now, you need to think about this fundamentally

00:20:16

from a different perspective.

00:20:18

And I know for a lot of like, you know,

00:20:21

the people that the e-mail is interested to, you know,

00:20:24

it talks about like, hey, making the transition

00:20:26

from being in it, like you just are this solo proprietor,

00:20:30

so solo for newer, to now wanting to build something

00:20:32

that's more sustainable.

00:20:34

Like you have to give up control.

00:20:36

You have to like actually make decisions

00:20:39

about this is how we are going to do it.

00:20:41

You have to be opinionated.

00:20:43

And it's just hard.

00:20:46

I don't know.

00:20:47

Like that's just my point there.

00:20:48

It's hard to do that.

00:20:49

It is hard to make an opinionated decision

00:20:51

and it is hard to give up control for those of us

00:20:55

that are like, well, I do it better.

00:20:57

My way is better, you know?

00:20:58

And oh, I'll know when I see it

00:21:00

and I'll make that decision,

00:21:02

but when I need to make that decision,

00:21:04

instead of making a decision that can then be repeated

00:21:08

over and over, like we wanna, you know,

00:21:10

we wanna lead as if it's wartime,

00:21:13

which is just, you know, unsustainable.

00:21:15

- You're hitting on the big thing here,

00:21:16

which is that if you view business as a system,

00:21:20

that means that you can optimize that system.

00:21:24

And the view that you were just kinda talking about

00:21:27

is the one that sounds like he deals with,

00:21:29

with most of the people that he works with

00:21:31

as a small business is, well,

00:21:34

I am this entrepreneur and no one can do it

00:21:38

the way that I do it.

00:21:39

So I can't possibly trust anybody else with this.

00:21:42

And if you just naturally extrapolate that

00:21:45

as your business grows,

00:21:46

what that means is that there is more and more

00:21:48

and more work for you to do.

00:21:49

And pretty soon you're working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week

00:21:53

and it's not sustainable.

00:21:55

So you have to get to the point where,

00:21:58

okay, this business has a turn key.

00:22:01

He uses the analogy of like a franchise,

00:22:04

which at first, like, I don't like that

00:22:05

because I don't like franchises.

00:22:08

I want something that is unique and local and bespoke, right?

00:22:12

But his point is with the franchise,

00:22:15

you have to have a model that works,

00:22:16

regardless of the people that are working it.

00:22:19

And you can apply that principle to a small business,

00:22:22

even if you're not trying to create separate franchises.

00:22:25

And what that does is it frees you up

00:22:27

because you know that things are gonna get done

00:22:29

in a consistent way.

00:22:31

But ultimately at the beginning here,

00:22:33

if you want to stop working the ridiculous hours,

00:22:38

if you want to enjoy working in your business again,

00:22:42

ultimately if your business is to change,

00:22:44

you have to change.

00:22:46

And there's a whole hour and a half conversation

00:22:49

just on that.

00:22:50

Like I've heard it said this way,

00:22:52

the characteristics of the kingdom emanate

00:22:55

from the character of the king.

00:22:57

That's a small business.

00:22:59

Like if you're disorganized and you don't have

00:23:02

the processes identified, like you can't just hire somebody,

00:23:06

okay, this is your area now.

00:23:08

You go fix it.

00:23:10

You're gonna reproduce what you are,

00:23:12

even if you've got some really wicked smart people

00:23:15

who are able to help you solve those problems,

00:23:17

ultimately change begins at the top.

00:23:20

Which can be hard to hear sometimes,

00:23:22

like whoa, you mean like I'm the problem?

00:23:24

Yeah, yeah, you are.

00:23:25

But ultimately that's good news

00:23:26

because it also means that you're the solution.

00:23:29

- Yeah, it's huge.

00:23:30

I love how you play that.

00:23:31

If your business is going to change,

00:23:32

you have to change.

00:23:33

- Yep.

00:23:34

- And way easier said than done.

00:23:36

(laughing)

00:23:37

- Absolutely.

00:23:38

- And I think too, the challenge,

00:23:40

the challenge there is, at least I know in my experience,

00:23:43

is it's not a fast change.

00:23:48

Even realizing that you need to change is like a great step,

00:23:53

but then beginning to implement it

00:23:55

and then just the slow process

00:23:59

of becoming systems oriented

00:24:02

and being okay with having repeatable structure

00:24:06

instead of just on the fly and the spontaneity.

00:24:09

And that stuff, it's very, very difficult.

00:24:12

Being okay to delegate.

00:24:13

Like these are all muscles that you have to build

00:24:15

and you have to answer.

00:24:17

And it requires, you know,

00:24:18

as we're going to get into in part three,

00:24:20

but it requires clarity.

00:24:22

And you got to get clear on like what you want to do

00:24:25

and where you're going.

00:24:26

And I know he talks about this right at the end.

00:24:28

Maybe I'm getting ahead Mike.

00:24:30

Mike slapped me if I'm like screwing up your podcast here.

00:24:33

I know you've got like a flow.

00:24:35

(laughs)

00:24:36

That's all right.

00:24:37

You have like a fancy like mind map.

00:24:40

I have like my 15 year old copy of this book

00:24:43

with like dog-eared pages and highlights.

00:24:46

And I'm like, where?

00:24:47

Where's the thing?

00:24:48

Okay.

00:24:49

So chapter six, I'm probably screwing your whole thing up.

00:24:52

Sorry, but we're going with it.

00:24:54

It goes this, it goes a mature business,

00:24:56

knows how it got to be where it is

00:24:59

and what it must do to get where it wants.

00:25:02

And so he talks about like,

00:25:03

this is the entrepreneurial perspective of like,

00:25:07

you have clarity about what got you here

00:25:09

and what will get you where you're going.

00:25:11

And so he's like, you can be,

00:25:13

you can have a mature entrepreneurial perspective

00:25:17

even when you're going through the early stages

00:25:20

of business adolescents and business growth,

00:25:21

business development, right?

00:25:22

Like you can still be like an early stage.

00:25:24

You're not quite sure what you're doing,

00:25:25

but yet a mature entrepreneur with this perspective

00:25:30

around entrepreneurial maturity.

00:25:34

And that, but that is like the hardest thing to do.

00:25:38

Like that right there, a mature business knows

00:25:39

how it got to be where it is

00:25:41

and what it must do to get where it wants to go.

00:25:45

Like there is clarity, like where do you want to go?

00:25:49

So many business owners have no idea.

00:25:51

They're like, well, I want more, more what?

00:25:54

More customers, more time, more money.

00:25:57

Like, okay, like we need a little bit more clarity

00:25:59

than that.

00:26:00

Like just, I want more money.

00:26:01

I want more time.

00:26:02

I want to be more comfortable.

00:26:03

I want to be more successful.

00:26:04

Like you've got to be clear.

00:26:05

Like where are you actually going?

00:26:06

And what are you going to do?

00:26:08

What is required to get you there?

00:26:10

That is like the hardest job of the business owner.

00:26:14

And no one else can answer that question.

00:26:16

Your team cannot answer that question for you.

00:26:19

Your friends cannot answer that question for you.

00:26:21

Your customers, like you have to decide.

00:26:24

Like that is the hardest job.

00:26:25

And so like even just coming at this,

00:26:28

like when you just realize you want to make the shift

00:26:31

and like, I want to work on my business,

00:26:34

well then it's like, oh crap.

00:26:37

I have to make a decision about where we're going

00:26:40

and I have to make a decision about how we're going to get there.

00:26:42

And very, very difficult to do.

00:26:47

- Yeah, I can tell that part really resonates with you.

00:26:50

Let me-- - How could you tell?

00:26:51

- Let me back up just a little bit

00:26:53

because you're talking about the end of the section here

00:26:57

in part one, which is ultimately the moment of clarity

00:27:00

that everyone needs to get to.

00:27:02

But he talks about at the beginning,

00:27:04

the EMITH itself is the belief that most small businesses

00:27:07

are started by entrepreneurs.

00:27:08

And I think he would say that actually they're

00:27:10

started by technicians.

00:27:12

You had mentioned this a little bit earlier.

00:27:14

A technician is basically the person who likes to do the work.

00:27:18

They don't like thinking big picture.

00:27:21

They just, well this is the job that needs to be done

00:27:23

and I'm going to be doing this.

00:27:25

So Michael Gerber describes what he calls an entrepreneurial

00:27:29

seizure, which is this moment when you're like,

00:27:31

I'm going to be an entrepreneur, right?

00:27:33

And you go and you start this business,

00:27:35

but then immediately the technician goes and starts

00:27:38

doing the work.

00:27:39

And a technician following an entrepreneurial seizure

00:27:43

follows a pattern he says, exhilaration, terror, exhaustion,

00:27:47

and despair.

00:27:48

(laughing)

00:27:49

Right, does that resonate?

00:27:51

- Yep.

00:27:52

And he talks about how the real battle is balancing

00:27:56

this entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician

00:27:58

and figuring out who's working on what when

00:28:01

and putting right people in their places.

00:28:03

And when you do that, your business

00:28:04

goes through these different phases,

00:28:05

infancy, adolescence, and then hopefully eventually maturity.

00:28:10

But yeah, let's go back to that technician

00:28:14

following the entrepreneurial seizure.

00:28:15

I'm kind of curious, Sean, what was the moment

00:28:18

of your entrepreneurial seizure?

00:28:19

And did you follow that pattern?

00:28:21

- Oh my gosh, I think I've probably had

00:28:23

a dozen entrepreneurial seizures over the years.

00:28:26

(laughing)

00:28:27

So for those that aren't familiar,

00:28:28

so I started my business in 2011

00:28:32

after my wife and I actually had a miscarriage.

00:28:34

And I was a blogger, I was blogging for part time

00:28:37

on the side, just kind of writing about Mac stuff

00:28:39

and whatnot.

00:28:40

And then realizing we were going to be parents

00:28:42

and then losing the baby kind of gave me some perspective

00:28:46

that my current job at the time,

00:28:48

I was the director of marketing for a large nonprofit.

00:28:51

I was like, I wanna make a transition in my career

00:28:53

and I like to have more flexibility of my time

00:28:55

and be able to work from home.

00:28:57

So I started working from home as an indie creator

00:29:00

and I was just blogging full time

00:29:01

and had some folks that supported me

00:29:03

and I had that podcaster talking about,

00:29:04

you know, Sean today was a podcast and whatnot.

00:29:06

And then over time, like as I had all these ideas

00:29:11

of like, ooh, here's a new project I wanna start

00:29:13

and here's a new project I wanna start.

00:29:14

Suddenly like I had expanded out

00:29:17

and I had more like more going on

00:29:20

that I could keep up with on a regular basis.

00:29:22

And so I needed like some help.

00:29:24

And so I hired like Steven Hackett actually

00:29:27

who's co-founder with Relay was the first person

00:29:30

that I ever gave money to to help me like work on the blog

00:29:34

and on the business, so to speak.

00:29:36

Just kind of part time.

00:29:37

So that was probably my first entrepreneurial seizure

00:29:40

was like, I need help.

00:29:42

Can I give someone some money

00:29:44

and can they do something that I'm doing?

00:29:47

And then in the process of them doing it,

00:29:49

can it generate at least as much money as I'm paying them?

00:29:53

But maybe even enough for me to pay some taxes

00:29:56

and keep a couple bucks in my pocket

00:29:58

and still pay them what I'm paying them.

00:29:59

Like, and I remember it was just,

00:30:01

I felt like I just like agonized over that decision

00:30:05

for like a week that I called my dad who like my parents,

00:30:08

my grandparents were business owners,

00:30:10

my parents were business owners.

00:30:11

So I called my dad and was like kind of talking to him

00:30:13

about it and was like, do I hire this person?

00:30:14

Like, I don't know.

00:30:15

You know, I think I was like gonna pay Steven.

00:30:17

Like, I can't remember what it was.

00:30:18

It was like a couple hundred bucks a month.

00:30:20

It wasn't even very much money.

00:30:22

But I just was like, so like, oh my gosh,

00:30:25

that's huge risk.

00:30:26

And then like lo and behold, like he was brilliant, of course.

00:30:30

And was able to take over a bunch of stuff that I was doing

00:30:33

and made not only enough money for himself,

00:30:36

but made enough money for the business.

00:30:37

And for the owner of the business, I E.M.E. to make a little bit.

00:30:40

So that was probably my first entrepreneurial seizure.

00:30:43

And then I've had a dozen cents then of continuing

00:30:45

to like hire people and find new projects

00:30:48

and stuff like that.

00:30:49

So.

00:30:50

(laughing)

00:30:52

- Well, that is one of the things that I jotted down

00:30:54

as an action item from this first section in chapter six

00:30:58

was learning to ask what is the opportunity.

00:31:00

And I feel like that's probably linked

00:31:03

to the entrepreneurial seizure

00:31:05

is when you can see the opportunity,

00:31:08

it's exciting.

00:31:11

It's exciting to the entrepreneur anyways,

00:31:13

maybe not the technician or the manager.

00:31:17

I guess let's go back to those three of those three roles.

00:31:21

Which one do you feel like you most easily operate in?

00:31:25

I'm probably more easily the technician or the manager,

00:31:28

but I'm learning to think like the entrepreneur.

00:31:31

And I do enjoy it, I have to admit.

00:31:32

- I really, yeah, I'm probably right there with you.

00:31:36

I definitely, I'm very comfortable with risk

00:31:40

and like the new ideas and try new things.

00:31:42

So I definitely have like a strong entrepreneurial chip

00:31:44

of like wanting to start stuff and figure it out

00:31:46

and like go for it.

00:31:47

And I don't like to, yeah, I enjoy the autonomy.

00:31:51

But then within my business,

00:31:53

I am perpetually kind of coming back to like the default

00:31:58

of like being the technician or being the manager

00:32:00

where I'm frequently like either telling people what to do

00:32:04

as opposed to just going, hey, here's the outcome.

00:32:06

You know, and so like it's been a huge muscle for me

00:32:10

to work to be able to delegate to my team and say,

00:32:13

here's the outcomes that you're in charge of.

00:32:15

And here are the resources at your disposal.

00:32:18

And here's what I'm expecting of you.

00:32:20

All right, now go do it.

00:32:21

And then the technician, of course,

00:32:24

like I'm very good at holding onto control and going,

00:32:26

oh, I'm the best at this, no one does this better than me.

00:32:29

I'll just do it, I'll just do that, I'll just do that.

00:32:32

And it's very easy to slip into that

00:32:35

as opposed to trying to focus on the actual systems

00:32:39

and the things that will keep me out of the day to day.

00:32:42

It's very easy to absorb the day to day for sure.

00:32:46

- Yeah, I've got another follow up question here

00:32:48

around the entrepreneurial perspective

00:32:50

'cause I feel like this is very nuanced.

00:32:52

This is again from chapter six.

00:32:55

I have heard it said before that like when you are building

00:32:58

a business and you need to figure out

00:33:00

what are the jobs to be done.

00:33:02

And that term jobs to be done, like you can unpack that.

00:33:05

And I don't think it's quite what Michael Gerber

00:33:07

is equating here, but he says that you shouldn't think

00:33:10

about what work has to be done.

00:33:13

And I think he would say it's because that anchors you

00:33:16

in maybe some low leverage tasks

00:33:18

while this is just what we've always done.

00:33:20

So someone needs to do this.

00:33:22

And he says, instead you should be thinking

00:33:24

entrepreneurial perspective is how must the business work?

00:33:28

Do you have any examples of shifting your mindset that way?

00:33:33

- Yeah, I have a fantastic example.

00:33:35

So I worked a couple of years ago,

00:33:37

I hired a business coach to kind of help me

00:33:40

like figure out literally exactly that.

00:33:41

And like what are the jobs to be done inside the business?

00:33:46

And so what we did was we kind of went through

00:33:50

and he helped me just look at what is it like,

00:33:54

what is our business model?

00:33:55

And what are we doing that generates customers?

00:33:58

What are we doing that attracts new leads or new prospects?

00:34:02

What are we doing to deliver our product to our customers?

00:34:06

What are the things that have to be done?

00:34:08

And then like I remember him saying like,

00:34:10

okay, you're not allowed to list any of the people

00:34:13

that work for you, you're not allowed to list

00:34:15

any of their names.

00:34:17

We're not allowed to talk about what they're currently doing.

00:34:19

You have to pretend that they don't exist right now

00:34:21

and what they're responsible for does,

00:34:23

is they're not responsible for that,

00:34:25

like turn all that off.

00:34:27

And then he's like, what we just talked about here,

00:34:30

your business model and how you, you know,

00:34:32

your marketing engine and your customer,

00:34:35

the delivery engine for your product delivery,

00:34:37

all this stuff.

00:34:38

Now, what are the jobs that are required for this to run

00:34:43

and to happen?

00:34:44

And so we kind of like worked through it's like,

00:34:45

okay, somebody has to be in charge of the community.

00:34:49

That's all that someone has to be in charge

00:34:51

of new product development.

00:34:53

Someone has to be in charge of the marketing.

00:34:56

Someone has to be in charge of customer support.

00:34:58

And so it's like we kind of identified these like

00:34:59

four or five like primary areas of responsibility.

00:35:03

And then we list it out.

00:35:04

What is the number one metric of success for each of those?

00:35:08

And so we had like a, like in terms of four disciplines

00:35:12

of execution, we had like a lead measure of like,

00:35:15

this is what they need, if they are doing this,

00:35:17

then it will be indicative of success.

00:35:20

And then we had like an economic metric of success too,

00:35:24

of like it's, you know, this level of churn

00:35:26

or this level of revenue or whatever it was.

00:35:30

So like there was an economic driver as well.

00:35:32

And then then we got to like,

00:35:35

we took the veil back off of the org chart.

00:35:38

He's like, okay, now with your current team,

00:35:41

does anyone fit in these roles?

00:35:43

Does anyone, you know, make sense here?

00:35:45

And then we kind of just went through and said,

00:35:47

okay, well this person would do great here.

00:35:48

This person would do great here.

00:35:50

Okay, we have a huge gaping hole here.

00:35:52

And like no one's doing that.

00:35:53

And then also with my coach, he was like,

00:35:55

Sean, you're not allowed to put your name on this list anywhere.

00:35:59

You have to, someone else's name for all of these.

00:36:04

So then it became very clear,

00:36:06

like where some of the big gaping holes were

00:36:08

in terms of like the org chart for stuff that I was doing

00:36:12

that we needed to find ways to delegate or to remove

00:36:15

or, you know, things like that.

00:36:17

So that was kind of like my big, you know,

00:36:20

aha moment related to the jobs to be done in that regard.

00:36:23

I love that. And the nuance there,

00:36:26

'cause you mentioned some examples of like the community

00:36:28

and things like that.

00:36:29

It's not that you were personally attached to the community.

00:36:33

It was because it was a part of the economic engine

00:36:35

of the business.

00:36:36

It was important.

00:36:37

It wasn't just something that had inertia.

00:36:40

We send out, we do this thing.

00:36:41

We publish this post, you know, every Friday.

00:36:43

And so I guess I better just find somebody to do that.

00:36:46

But really it's figuring out what are the high leverage

00:36:49

activities that drive the business forward

00:36:51

and then putting people in the right positions

00:36:53

that they can do that work and they can do it successfully.

00:36:56

- Am I like completely derailing your show?

00:36:59

- No, I love this.

00:37:00

(laughs)

00:37:02

I actually, I'm trying to find the balance here

00:37:07

because part of me wants to just run off

00:37:09

and talk about the tangents,

00:37:13

but also trying to follow a little bit of the format.

00:37:15

I guess let's go into part two here.

00:37:18

I think this one will actually be pretty quick,

00:37:21

famous last words, but this is the turnkey revolution,

00:37:26

a new view of business.

00:37:27

And so this is kind of getting into the value

00:37:30

of the systems.

00:37:32

So essentially what you were just describing,

00:37:35

like why that works.

00:37:38

And this is where you made the comment,

00:37:42

you can't put your name in any of the boxes, right?

00:37:45

This is where Michael Gerber would respond directly to that.

00:37:49

But let me just kind of share a little bit

00:37:51

about the turnkey revolution here first.

00:37:54

So chapter seven is the turnkey revolution

00:37:57

and this is where he talks about the story of McDonald's.

00:37:59

Now I've heard the story of McDonald's before,

00:38:03

but this added some new details.

00:38:05

Essentially it was a hamburger stand

00:38:08

that was owned by two brothers,

00:38:09

Mac and Jim, Mac Donald, M-A-C, right?

00:38:13

And then Ray Crock, famously the milkshake salesman,

00:38:16

goes to see them at their hamburger stand

00:38:18

in San Bernardino, California.

00:38:20

He's impressed by the operational efficiency

00:38:22

and that anyone can make a good hamburger,

00:38:24

even high schoolers.

00:38:25

Those are Michael Gerber's words, not mine,

00:38:27

so I'll get mad at him.

00:38:29

And then he convinces the brothers

00:38:31

to let him franchise their method.

00:38:33

12 years later he's bought them out

00:38:35

and it's a $40 billion per year business.

00:38:38

Now I know the story of McDonald's

00:38:41

is gonna be polarizing for people

00:38:44

because there are people who are like,

00:38:46

well I don't want a McDonald's business.

00:38:49

I don't wanna make cheap hamburgers.

00:38:52

I wanna be on the high end of that,

00:38:54

I wanna make quality things

00:38:55

and really what he's talking about here is

00:38:58

it doesn't matter the price point,

00:39:00

really when he's talking about a franchise,

00:39:03

it's the predictability of the customer experience.

00:39:08

And then in chapter eight he kinda talks about

00:39:10

the University of Hamburgology,

00:39:11

that's where they talk about the specifics.

00:39:14

Like French Vires aren't in the warming bin,

00:39:16

more than seven minutes.

00:39:18

All the patties are turned at the same time,

00:39:19

the pickles are placed by hand,

00:39:21

so they're not gonna slide out.

00:39:22

And this part reminded me of,

00:39:23

I've heard some stories of the training

00:39:26

that goes on at Disney resorts and theme parks,

00:39:29

to make sure that the customer experiences

00:39:32

exactly the way that they want it to be.

00:39:35

That's the big takeaway here,

00:39:37

is you are a successful business

00:39:39

when you can identify a customer's perceived needs

00:39:43

and wants their desires,

00:39:45

and then meet them in a very specific and systematic way

00:39:49

so that it doesn't deviate from their expectations.

00:39:52

Is that a fair summary?

00:39:54

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:39:56

- Right, so the big challenge then is like,

00:39:58

how do you do that?

00:39:59

(laughs)

00:40:00

I don't know, you have any examples of things

00:40:03

that you have done in order to guarantee

00:40:06

that experience in your businesses,

00:40:08

because I remember back in the day,

00:40:10

one of the first products I bought from you

00:40:13

was a book called The Light is in the Details.

00:40:15

(laughs)

00:40:17

Very much in line with what he's talking about

00:40:20

in this section.

00:40:21

- Yeah, I think, so I think even just like that perspective,

00:40:25

right, so like you were saying,

00:40:26

some people don't want to own

00:40:29

a bunch of McDonald's franchises, right?

00:40:31

I know there are,

00:40:33

and there's different motivating factors

00:40:35

for entrepreneurship and business development.

00:40:37

Like it's like some of us is like,

00:40:38

yeah, I wanna own a bunch of McDonald's

00:40:40

because I wanna just make a lot of money.

00:40:44

But some people will have like a different approach.

00:40:45

Like I want to create something

00:40:47

and I wanna build a relationship with my customers,

00:40:49

or I want to do,

00:40:50

you know, like there's all sorts of different layers

00:40:53

of the motivate,

00:40:56

like what motivates us behind the entrepreneurship.

00:40:58

And I think at some level,

00:41:00

it's usually like a blend of obviously like time,

00:41:04

autonomy, money,

00:41:05

impacting people's lives,

00:41:07

making their lives better,

00:41:09

you know, working with the team, leading a team,

00:41:11

like, you know, there's a blend of those.

00:41:12

So when you look at it from that perspective of like,

00:41:17

okay, now you own a business

00:41:18

that should be able to be turnkey

00:41:19

that you can deliver these quality results

00:41:21

on a regular basis.

00:41:22

It kind of, it softens, you know,

00:41:25

the palettes that I speak when you're,

00:41:27

we're talking about it in context of like a franchise.

00:41:30

So for me, I think the most recent,

00:41:32

I would say probably the best example

00:41:35

is with one of our core flagship programs,

00:41:39

it's called the Focus Academy.

00:41:41

And it's this four week program

00:41:43

that takes people through

00:41:44

to build their ideal weekly schedule

00:41:46

and to establish their life mission.

00:41:49

And this is something that like,

00:41:52

for a long time, I was teaching it personally.

00:41:56

And so it was me and the team

00:41:57

and like the three or four of us,

00:42:00

it was like all hands on deck for this four week program

00:42:03

where we'd have hundreds of people come through at a time,

00:42:05

well not hundreds, but we'd have like,

00:42:06

usually about 125 people would come through at a time.

00:42:09

And like taking them through this process

00:42:13

to help them just, you know,

00:42:14

reset their schedule and kind of get all their stuff together.

00:42:18

And I would lead a class on Mondays,

00:42:20

I would teach another program on Tuesdays,

00:42:23

we would have these small group get-togethers on Wednesday

00:42:25

and Thursday, we'd do group Q&A on Friday,

00:42:27

it was like very time consuming.

00:42:29

And we did several of these in a row

00:42:31

and it was just like, this is untenable for me

00:42:33

and even for the team.

00:42:34

And so we're like, how can we still get results for people

00:42:39

but in a more sustainable, systematic, repeatable way?

00:42:43

And in fact, how can we even do that?

00:42:45

So their experience and their results are even better.

00:42:49

How we not only improve on the process for them,

00:42:51

but also do it in a more scalable, sustainable way.

00:42:53

So what we did was we took all the training

00:42:55

that I was doing live and we prerecorded it.

00:42:58

And that allowed it to go from a 90 minutes worth of training

00:43:02

down to like 40 because it was way more like just concise

00:43:07

and I wasn't rambly.

00:43:08

And then the videos were much more polished

00:43:12

and so it was easier to follow along

00:43:13

and the slides were better.

00:43:15

And there was that dynamic.

00:43:17

And then we were able to create like certain processes

00:43:21

for like at these stages in the program,

00:43:25

like these are the questions that we're asking.

00:43:27

And so then my team had like this manual,

00:43:30

like a facilitator's guide, so to speak.

00:43:32

So they were able to then take people through.

00:43:34

And then what we found is that then by my team

00:43:37

doing some of the Q and A,

00:43:38

they were able to give their unique perspective

00:43:41

'cause I had already told my stories in the training videos.

00:43:44

And so then when people ask me a question,

00:43:46

I like have the same answer on repeat.

00:43:48

So they're just getting the same thing they already heard.

00:43:50

But by having my team answer the question,

00:43:52

they're able to get a unique new perspective.

00:43:55

So it elevated like the overall experience in that way

00:43:59

because now they're getting a different answer

00:44:01

that resonated for people in a different ways.

00:44:03

They're hearing two unique approaches

00:44:06

to something not just my same thing over and over.

00:44:09

So that was one of the ways that we took something that

00:44:11

I thought was so unique and so special

00:44:13

and had to be done this laborious way

00:44:15

and involve me able to completely systematize it

00:44:18

and delegate the entire thing.

00:44:20

And so like earlier this year,

00:44:22

when we had our last training,

00:44:23

I wasn't involved at all.

00:44:25

My team led the whole thing without me.

00:44:28

I was there at the beginning to welcome everybody

00:44:30

and I was there at the end for the graduation

00:44:31

to like high five and congratulate.

00:44:34

But I didn't host any of the calls.

00:44:35

I didn't do any of the Q and A or any of the training.

00:44:38

And the results that we heard from people in the feedback

00:44:41

was just as good as any of the other times that we had done it.

00:44:44

- Mm, that's awesome.

00:44:46

And it kind of hits that something that he talks about

00:44:49

in this section that the true product of a business

00:44:54

is the business itself, right?

00:44:56

The experience that you're able to deliver,

00:44:58

even if it's detached from your personality,

00:45:01

which if you have a personality driven content business,

00:45:04

that can be a little bit hard sometimes.

00:45:06

It's like, well, obviously people are joining

00:45:09

because they wanna be with me live.

00:45:10

(laughs)

00:45:12

No, not necessarily.

00:45:13

They're there because you can deliver a solution

00:45:17

to a problem that they're facing.

00:45:20

- Yeah, yeah.

00:45:21

- And there's, I mean, the live sessions

00:45:22

aren't necessarily good or bad either.

00:45:24

I mean, it's really just how can you meet

00:45:26

the needs in the best way possible?

00:45:28

That's, there's some nuance there.

00:45:30

But also he talks about how your business is not your life,

00:45:33

right?

00:45:34

And it's cool to hear you talk about that

00:45:36

because it feels like that model that,

00:45:39

or that experience that you just described

00:45:42

where you're able to systematize this in a way

00:45:45

that's actually better for some of the people going through it

00:45:48

because they're able to get the multiple perspectives

00:45:49

and things like that.

00:45:50

The business is now set up to support the lifestyle

00:45:55

because he talks about how your primary purpose

00:45:57

of your business, a primary purpose of your life

00:46:00

is not to serve your business,

00:46:01

but the primary purpose of your business

00:46:02

is to serve your life.

00:46:03

- That's huge.

00:46:05

Mike, you should say that again.

00:46:07

- Yeah, the primary purpose of your life

00:46:08

is not to serve your business,

00:46:10

but the primary purpose of your business

00:46:12

is to serve your life.

00:46:14

And on the surface, that kinda sounds like,

00:46:16

well, yeah, work, life balance, I get that,

00:46:18

but it's not quite that simple.

00:46:20

- It's huge and I think that this is a,

00:46:22

I know for me,

00:46:25

this was a huge mindset shift.

00:46:29

And I've talked about this before.

00:46:32

Yeah, I think with you guys,

00:46:33

even on a recent podcast that we did for Focus

00:46:36

on your show of like the difficulty

00:46:40

as the business owner to delegate tasks to my team

00:46:44

and this feeling that like,

00:46:46

well, I don't wanna do this certain task.

00:46:48

And so if I delegate it to my team,

00:46:52

well, that stinks.

00:46:52

And so there's like, there's kind of like this old OG work ethic

00:46:57

in my mind that's like, well,

00:47:00

I'm never gonna do something that,

00:47:02

I'd never ask anyone on my team

00:47:03

to do something that I'm not willing to do.

00:47:05

And so that translates into the business owner

00:47:07

does everything.

00:47:09

And then everyone else on that team that works for them

00:47:11

like has it easy and like isn't doing anything.

00:47:14

And that doesn't honor your team, it doesn't honor you.

00:47:16

And like this perspective of like,

00:47:18

oh yeah, the point of this business

00:47:20

is to support and serve my life.

00:47:22

And like just even shifting to like this business,

00:47:26

it's not a thing, it's not a person, it's not a baby, right?

00:47:30

Like it's an organization.

00:47:33

And the whole point of this that this exists

00:47:36

is to better the lives of my team,

00:47:38

to better the lives of all the customers that we interact with,

00:47:41

to better the lives of all the vendors that we deal with

00:47:43

and that we have relationships with

00:47:45

and to better the lives of the owners of the business.

00:47:49

And like realizing that is so like just empowering.

00:47:54

And I remember like I was talking to some friends of mine

00:47:58

about just some, you know, challenging decisions

00:48:00

that I was facing and a few things like that.

00:48:02

And they're like, well, you're the owner.

00:48:04

What do you want?

00:48:05

What do you wanna do?

00:48:05

Like what, you know, this is your thing, you know,

00:48:09

that's your money, you're spending on that.

00:48:11

What do you wanna do about it?

00:48:13

And just the like, oh yeah, this is here for me.

00:48:17

Like this is, this is, this is here for me.

00:48:19

It was here for my team to like serve us

00:48:20

and to make our lives better.

00:48:22

That's such a, I don't know, for me,

00:48:25

that was a huge revelation that I still,

00:48:27

like it's still a hardship sometimes to feel like,

00:48:30

I don't know, like I wanna, I wanna be noble

00:48:33

by being a martyr on my business.

00:48:35

And I was like, that's stupid.

00:48:37

That's not noble, that's stupid.

00:48:39

That's what that is.

00:48:41

- Yeah.

00:48:41

And one of the things you're kind of hinting at

00:48:44

is that it's not just about you.

00:48:45

You've got shareholders or stakeholders

00:48:47

however you wanna describe it,

00:48:49

who are gonna benefit from this as well.

00:48:51

So actually disconnect, like in some ways,

00:48:55

trying to make the business support a better lifestyle

00:49:00

for you can feel a little bit selfish,

00:49:02

but it's really not because there are other people

00:49:04

that are connected to you who are gonna benefit from it

00:49:08

as well.

00:49:09

So it's important that you, you make that mindset shift.

00:49:12

And then the other thing that's kind of related to this,

00:49:15

is you were talking about how I don't wanna force my team

00:49:18

to do anything that I don't wanna do.

00:49:20

And ultimately that's gonna lead to,

00:49:24

not, it's people not pulling their weight.

00:49:27

And ultimately it's gonna put a straight on the organization

00:49:29

and that's gonna hurt everybody in the long run.

00:49:32

Your team would most likely say, you know what?

00:49:34

I'll help out, let me do that thing.

00:49:37

But there's another version of that I think,

00:49:39

which he kind of talks a little bit in this book about too,

00:49:41

which is the delegation by abdication.

00:49:44

So you could go all the way the other way

00:49:46

and be like, I am the owner

00:49:48

and I am not going to do this anymore.

00:49:49

Now you go figure it out.

00:49:51

That's not a great way to do it either.

00:49:54

- Yeah, like the, oh my gosh, yeah.

00:49:55

Derek Sivers talks about that as well.

00:49:57

Probably my all time favorite business book ever

00:49:59

is Anything You Want by Derek Sivers.

00:50:03

- It's a good one.

00:50:04

- And he talks about that too.

00:50:04

He's like, if you delegate by abdicating,

00:50:09

he actually is like, you'll end up with mutiny

00:50:12

because then they'll end up just figuring something out

00:50:15

and they'll figure it out without you

00:50:15

and then they'll realize they don't want you.

00:50:17

And that's actually kind of partly what happened with him

00:50:20

and CD Baby in the early days.

00:50:21

And he ended up moving to California.

00:50:23

He's like, I'll just code the next version of the website

00:50:25

and you guys just kind of run everything else.

00:50:27

Yeah, so it is the hard work.

00:50:30

And that's part of where the, I think coming back to that,

00:50:32

just the point of like the hard work of the business owner

00:50:37

is to provide clarity to their team.

00:50:38

So it's not just like, hey, I'm going to delegate this

00:50:40

to you, I want you to do it.

00:50:42

But then it's also, I'm going to make sure

00:50:45

you're able to do this.

00:50:46

I'm going to give you the resources

00:50:48

and I'm going to give you the support that you need

00:50:53

to get this figured out.

00:50:55

But then there also comes a point where it's like,

00:50:56

okay, you know what, you've had enough support.

00:50:58

You've got enough resources.

00:51:00

Now you've been able to figure it out to this point

00:51:03

and you can take it from here

00:51:04

or maybe you can even take it to the next level

00:51:06

from here beyond what I could do.

00:51:07

Like I've given you the point to now where you're able to do that.

00:51:11

But that's in a like a healthy, nurturing mentorship

00:51:16

position, not abdicating.

00:51:18

So a lot of work in that regard to provide the clarity

00:51:21

to provide the help.

00:51:22

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:23

And that kind of gets into part three.

00:51:25

So let's go there.

00:51:27

- Well, it's like, I think it's this, right?

00:51:29

I'm sorry, I really, there's a lot in chapter nine here,

00:51:31

which is the very end of part two

00:51:33

that really stuck out to me.

00:51:35

But it's this like, how do I get my business to work

00:51:38

but without me?

00:51:40

And then he goes, how can I get my people to work

00:51:42

but without my constant interference?

00:51:46

And I think like so often, like there's again,

00:51:49

like just coming back to that mindset of like,

00:51:50

I don't want to do anything that I wouldn't ask them

00:51:52

to do anything that I want to do.

00:51:53

Like it really is your job to get your people

00:51:56

to be able to work without you.

00:51:58

And there is like, I know for me that has been such

00:52:02

a mindset obstacle.

00:52:05

And the harder that I hold on to that mindset

00:52:08

and the more difficult it is for me,

00:52:10

like to let go of it.

00:52:12

Like those are all like the points where it's like,

00:52:14

yeah, we're not growing because of that,

00:52:15

we're not growing because of that.

00:52:17

And when you begin to realize that by delegating

00:52:19

to your team and getting out of their way,

00:52:22

like in a healthy way, that is the path toward growth.

00:52:26

And that is the path towards scale for things

00:52:29

that can be done on repeat without you,

00:52:30

for serving your customers and getting the best for them.

00:52:33

And it really does honor your team.

00:52:36

And it dignifies them as being capable

00:52:38

of doing good work and not being treated like little children.

00:52:42

But it's such a, I know for me,

00:52:44

I don't know if anyone else listening can relate,

00:52:46

but it's like that has been such a mindset obstacle.

00:52:49

Like as I've slowly learned how to do that better,

00:52:52

I've seen the impact that it's had in a good way.

00:52:56

- Yeah, well, that's the next section.

00:53:00

Part three is really about the system.

00:53:01

And that's why I think this is probably connected,

00:53:06

is that in order for you to be able to hand this off

00:53:10

to your team, you have to have thought through

00:53:13

this whole business development process

00:53:17

is how Michael Gerber packages this.

00:53:19

But honestly, this is gonna be an interesting part

00:53:22

of the conversation because I've read lots of books

00:53:25

in my integrator role that talk about business systems

00:53:29

like this.

00:53:30

And I've got like four or five different versions

00:53:32

that are bouncing around in my head

00:53:34

compared to the pieces that he has here.

00:53:37

And honestly, if you laid them all out side by side,

00:53:40

they probably are all very, very similar.

00:53:43

But I think this is an important concept.

00:53:47

And I guess I tend to think in systems anyways.

00:53:51

So I've sort of naturally gravitate towards this sort of stuff.

00:53:55

This is the longest part of the book,

00:53:57

but it's also by far the longest section of the notes I have

00:54:02

just because I find all the details about this

00:54:06

kind of fascinating.

00:54:07

So maybe let's jump into the business development process

00:54:11

here.

00:54:12

Now he's got a couple chapters at the beginning,

00:54:15

your business development process,

00:54:16

which is really about how your business development

00:54:19

process has three phases, innovation,

00:54:21

quantification, orchestration,

00:54:23

and how it's not just thinking up new things to do,

00:54:27

but how do you actually do those things,

00:54:29

quantifying everything related to your business.

00:54:32

And then in the business development program,

00:54:33

he lays out his seven step process.

00:54:36

Before we get into the specifics of the process, though,

00:54:39

I'm kind of curious this innovate,

00:54:43

quantify, orchestrate piece.

00:54:45

This is kind of what you were talking about.

00:54:48

One of the things he mentions is that you should quantify

00:54:50

everything related to your business.

00:54:53

I'm not sure I agree with that as it's written.

00:54:57

I'm curious what your perspective would be.

00:55:00

I know that for us, I mean, we're a small team.

00:55:03

If we tried to quantify everything in the business,

00:55:08

we would just be drowning in data and drowning in reports.

00:55:13

So everybody on my team has one specific metric

00:55:18

that they are responsible for.

00:55:19

Like they own, you could put it like, they own a number.

00:55:23

And so one person who's in charge of our membership,

00:55:26

their metric, their number, their quantifiable thing,

00:55:30

their in charge of is membership churn.

00:55:33

Our growth person is in charge of our return on ad spent.

00:55:38

I'm in charge of overall membership growth.

00:55:42

Like that's my, as the director of marketing right now,

00:55:44

as well as the boss, that's what I'm in charge of.

00:55:47

It's like we all have a very specific,

00:55:49

this is the number that we can quantify

00:55:52

that you're in charge of.

00:55:52

And so, and then with those,

00:55:55

each person has a clear number they own.

00:55:56

And then there's usually like two numbers or three maybe,

00:56:01

quantifiably, that you use to support and get the data from

00:56:05

and help you make decisions for your big metric that you own.

00:56:10

But it's like past that, past like one clear metric

00:56:13

that you own and then the two or three supporting

00:56:15

like numbers and data points to help you make decisions

00:56:20

around improving what you're responsible for.

00:56:23

After that, it's like, man, that now we're just getting lost

00:56:25

in the weeds and we're just, this is too much.

00:56:27

So we only quantify a few things that matter the most.

00:56:32

And then the few things that support the,

00:56:34

help us to actually make decisions to grow,

00:56:36

but we're focusing on.

00:56:38

- Yeah, I 100% agree with that approach.

00:56:42

- I knew you would.

00:56:43

- I don't know.

00:56:44

Yeah, I don't know what the point is

00:56:47

where you have enough resources to actually quantify

00:56:50

everything and where that could be useful.

00:56:52

I mean, I worked with you and small team.

00:56:55

I worked with a bigger team as an integrator.

00:56:56

Where literally this was my job was to make sure

00:56:58

that all the trains are running on time

00:57:00

and is the company growing?

00:57:01

Are we gonna be profitable, all that kind of stuff?

00:57:04

And so I've kind of experienced firsthand the problems

00:57:08

with trying to quantify everything.

00:57:10

And in my opinion, what it, more data points,

00:57:15

what they do is they give you more opportunities

00:57:19

to tell stories that aren't true.

00:57:21

Because the human part of you is going to look for reasons

00:57:26

why what you're doing is working or not working.

00:57:31

But I think most people will,

00:57:33

their confirmation bias will kick in

00:57:35

and they wanna show how smart they were

00:57:37

when they decided they were gonna do this thing.

00:57:38

And so they'll find a data point and says,

00:57:40

oh, well actually, you know, the critical number,

00:57:43

the key number is going down,

00:57:44

but there's some positive signs over here

00:57:46

with this other stuff.

00:57:47

(laughs)

00:57:48

So that can get in your way and it can stunt

00:57:52

your business's growth.

00:57:55

But also I think like as a small business,

00:57:57

if you're just starting to quantify data,

00:58:00

the more things you try to quantify,

00:58:03

the harder it is to get a grasp on what's actually going on.

00:58:07

So maybe if you're starting from the very beginning

00:58:10

and you're crafting your business engine,

00:58:13

this maybe makes a little bit more sense,

00:58:17

but even then I have a hard time thinking

00:58:19

that this is a good approach.

00:58:21

I've done a little bit of operational consulting

00:58:24

since I left the integrator role.

00:58:26

And with all the people that I've talked to,

00:58:29

they've kind of fallen into this trap

00:58:31

and they're trying to,

00:58:32

they feel overwhelmed by their business

00:58:34

and they don't really know what's going on.

00:58:36

And I've forced them to do the same thing

00:58:39

that you were talking about,

00:58:40

the person that you worked with,

00:58:41

it's like, okay, so what is the actual way

00:58:43

that your business makes money, right?

00:58:46

For a creator business, it's something like,

00:58:49

well, they watch my YouTube videos

00:58:52

or they read my blog post,

00:58:54

so they download my podcast episodes.

00:58:57

And then from there,

00:58:58

they're gonna go to email newsletter or something.

00:59:01

Okay, so the key event there is that

00:59:03

we're transitioning from watcher, reader, listener

00:59:07

to subscriber.

00:59:09

And then from there, we're gonna download,

00:59:12

you know, a tripwire product, a small purchase

00:59:15

and then a certain percentage of those people

00:59:18

will go on to purchase the big thing.

00:59:19

Okay, now we can see, like,

00:59:21

the big thing is where we make our money

00:59:22

and we have a clear path now for how people get there.

00:59:25

And at each point between those different stages,

00:59:28

there's an action that happens.

00:59:30

So I tell people, those are the critical numbers

00:59:32

you need, chuck everything else.

00:59:34

Just look at the ones that are indicating

00:59:38

how people are going from one stage to the next,

00:59:41

'cause that's where the bottlenecks are

00:59:42

and that's where if you're able to solve those problems,

00:59:45

it's gonna have the biggest impact on your business.

00:59:50

And just like, what are the few data points you need

00:59:55

that will help you make informed decisions

00:59:59

around those bottlenecks?

01:00:01

Yep.

01:00:02

And that's the biggest thing, like,

01:00:03

sometimes you just have so much data,

01:00:04

you're like, I don't even know what to do with this.

01:00:06

And so it's not helping you make a decision.

01:00:08

So it's like, give you enough to make decisions

01:00:10

and then move on.

01:00:11

Yeah, let's talk about the bottlenecks for a second

01:00:13

because I could be wrong here.

01:00:15

I have limited experience with running a small business anyways.

01:00:19

Been involved in lots of them.

01:00:21

My dad was an entrepreneur.

01:00:23

He ran a small business.

01:00:24

So I've been around it my entire life,

01:00:25

but seems to me that there are always problems to be solved.

01:00:30

And the big, the big struggle for an entrepreneur

01:00:34

is not figuring out what are the problems to be solved,

01:00:39

but focusing on which problems to solve.

01:00:41

(laughing)

01:00:42

Right?

01:00:43

So that's where the bottlenecks come in handy,

01:00:44

is like, this is the important problem to solve

01:00:48

as opposed to, well, this thing is broken over there.

01:00:50

Well, yeah, but how much of an impact does that really make?

01:00:53

Mm-hmm.

01:00:54

Oh, for sure.

01:00:55

That is, it's, again, like,

01:00:56

and that's coming back to your job as the business owner.

01:01:00

It's like, you've got to decide

01:01:02

what is the problem that we're going to focus on,

01:01:04

like identifying what is the single biggest problem

01:01:06

in the business right now?

01:01:07

What's our single biggest constraint?

01:01:08

And usually, I mean, honestly, it usually does boil down

01:01:12

to just like one of a couple of things.

01:01:14

It's like your lead engine or your product engine, right?

01:01:18

Like, you don't have enough customers coming in the door

01:01:20

or you're struggling to deliver to your customers

01:01:24

that are paying you.

01:01:24

And it's just like, usually it's in one of those two buckets.

01:01:27

And so basically like, okay, well,

01:01:30

what's the biggest bottleneck for these

01:01:32

and then what are we going to do to solve it?

01:01:35

And a lot of it is just like, okay,

01:01:36

let's, what about this?

01:01:38

Here's a guess.

01:01:39

I'm going to hypothesize here

01:01:40

and then let's see what happens.

01:01:42

And if that doesn't work, okay,

01:01:43

let's try this other thing.

01:01:44

And okay, is that working?

01:01:45

All right, well, then let's keep doing that on repeat.

01:01:48

And now, okay, now what's the next new bottleneck

01:01:51

that we've just discovered?

01:01:52

- Yeah.

01:01:53

Let's talk about the org chart for a second here

01:01:55

because the one that he shares,

01:01:58

I've seen lots of different versions of these,

01:02:00

but at the top are the shareholders

01:02:03

and primarily that would be the CEO visionary.

01:02:08

If you're talking about EOS would be

01:02:12

in that spot.

01:02:14

And then below that,

01:02:16

you've got the chief operating officer or the COO.

01:02:19

And then below that, there are basically three boxes

01:02:22

on the next level,

01:02:23

the vice president of marketing,

01:02:25

the vice president of operations,

01:02:26

vice president of finance.

01:02:28

And then from there, there are additional boxes,

01:02:30

which those I think can kind of vary based

01:02:32

on the business that you're running.

01:02:34

But that those three boxes,

01:02:37

which is really like sales and marketing,

01:02:39

operations and then finance,

01:02:42

do you agree that those are the critical areas

01:02:47

in a business and why or why not?

01:02:51

- Yeah, and this is, I mean,

01:02:53

Sean, do you agree in this time tested,

01:02:57

organizational strategy?

01:02:58

- Well, I guess what I'm trying to get at is,

01:03:00

have you noticed any other boxes in your org chart

01:03:06

other than those three?

01:03:07

I think probably they might be below that,

01:03:10

but maybe there's another one on the side could be.

01:03:13

And then do you have any trouble figuring out

01:03:16

who's gonna sit in those spots?

01:03:18

And then kind of what are the gotchas

01:03:20

that come with filling out this org chart?

01:03:23

Like one thing that I think maybe could be a mistake

01:03:25

is having people in too many of those boxes.

01:03:28

I kind of fell into that as the integrator.

01:03:30

It was like, well, you could probably help in this area.

01:03:32

So I became vice president of operations.

01:03:34

And it's like, well,

01:03:35

someone needs to get a handle on finance.

01:03:37

So I guess I'll do that.

01:03:38

And now I'm filling too many boxes

01:03:40

and I'm spread too thin and things break down.

01:03:42

So yeah.

01:03:45

So for sure, I think in small business,

01:03:48

that is one of the big challenges is reaching a point

01:03:51

where it's like you have enough scale

01:03:53

to be able to use this,

01:03:56

but like there's usually like a middle ground

01:03:57

where it's like, I have,

01:03:59

I'm big enough to not be able to wear all these hats

01:04:03

without it destroying me,

01:04:04

but I'm not so big that I can now outsource

01:04:07

these hats.

01:04:07

And so there is like that really difficult ground.

01:04:10

And for a lot of businesses,

01:04:11

right around like that $750,000 mark where it's like,

01:04:14

oh my gosh, we're big enough that we need help.

01:04:18

So anyways, so when you're like wearing all these hats.

01:04:20

So this one, the three different main roles,

01:04:24

finance, operations, marketing.

01:04:26

I know for in the creator business,

01:04:29

there is another one which is product development.

01:04:33

And there is, you know, or product delivery.

01:04:36

And you could like put that under operations,

01:04:39

you could put under marketing,

01:04:40

but I wouldn't like, I know like if you went over to Apple,

01:04:44

you know, like they're not developing the iPhone,

01:04:48

the marketing guys are not the ones developing the iPhone

01:04:50

and the operational guys are not the ones developing iPhone.

01:04:53

There is a product, you know,

01:04:55

you know, chief design officer, that role that is, you know,

01:04:59

developing and designing their product suite.

01:05:03

So a lot of times, I know EOS talks about this,

01:05:06

a lot of times that's actually just a CEO.

01:05:08

The visionary CEO guy, they're the ones out there

01:05:11

building the products, creating the next version

01:05:14

of the future for the business,

01:05:15

and then they're handing it down to their COO.

01:05:18

And going, okay, here is the thing that I've made.

01:05:20

Now go like systematize its delivery and market it

01:05:23

and sell it, here you go.

01:05:25

So sometimes that's what is happening.

01:05:28

But if in that context, it's like, okay, well then

01:05:31

the CEO needs to be recognized as like vice president

01:05:35

of product development as well as being CEO.

01:05:38

And so like having that, that obviousness of like,

01:05:42

not only are you the owner, okay, like you're helping set

01:05:44

the vision and the direction for the business

01:05:46

and telling us where we're going and being clear,

01:05:49

you're also because you're kind of like the visionary

01:05:53

and you're coming up with the products,

01:05:54

you sit in two seats.

01:05:56

And when you're over here in product as, you know,

01:06:00

vice president of product development,

01:06:02

well that seat on the org chart is actually

01:06:04

underneath the COO.

01:06:07

- Yeah, that's the hard part.

01:06:09

That was the biggest struggle for me

01:06:11

because the CEO who technically is above me, right,

01:06:14

is also the vice president of sales and marketing,

01:06:17

which is below me.

01:06:19

And so there were so many times like, okay,

01:06:21

so as the CEO speaking to the vice president

01:06:24

of sales and marketing, your numbers aren't where

01:06:26

they need to be.

01:06:28

- Exactly.

01:06:29

That is very, very like, that's a very

01:06:32

precocious spot to be in and a small business like that,

01:06:35

where, and it takes a very healthy, mature team

01:06:40

to be able to relate to each other in different contexts

01:06:43

like that.

01:06:44

It's like, okay, with my CEO hat on,

01:06:46

here's the vision direction that we're going.

01:06:48

Now with my VP of sales hat on, you know,

01:06:52

what's my budget for, you know, marketing or whatever?

01:06:56

And that can be very difficult to navigate for sure.

01:07:00

- Yeah.

01:07:02

I'll back up just a bit here to talk about the pieces

01:07:06

of the business development process here,

01:07:07

but I don't really care to talk about the whole process here

01:07:11

'cause I don't think it's packaged real neatly.

01:07:13

So he talks about how you need to have a primary aim,

01:07:18

the story you want told about your life essentially.

01:07:22

And then from there, you've got your strategic objective

01:07:24

and that is not a business strategy and plan.

01:07:26

It's a list of standards that you want to maintain.

01:07:30

Then you've got your organizational strategy,

01:07:33

which is really kind of the org chart

01:07:35

that we were talking about, your management strategy,

01:07:39

which this is like the operations manuals

01:07:42

and the checklist, things like that, your people's strategy.

01:07:46

And if I were to summarize this,

01:07:47

it's kind of like your culture.

01:07:50

And it's, there's an interesting point in this chapter

01:07:55

where he talks about a business is like a dojo,

01:07:56

a place where you can practice being as good as you can be.

01:08:00

I'd like to come back to that in a second

01:08:01

because I know you are a black belt, I believe.

01:08:05

But the other two pieces here are the marketing strategy

01:08:09

and then the system strategy, which I agreed,

01:08:12

those are important pieces, but again,

01:08:13

not packaged super, super well,

01:08:15

I feel like in this system.

01:08:17

So let's just nitpick a couple things here

01:08:19

and before we wrap up, let's talk about the dojo.

01:08:23

So how is your business like a dojo

01:08:26

or is this completely off the wall?

01:08:28

- I think this is a great perspective

01:08:29

and again, it kind of comes back to that mindset, right?

01:08:33

Of like, oh, I feel bad delegating work

01:08:37

that I don't want to do, right?

01:08:38

And I know you've got some highlights here as well.

01:08:40

Whereas like there is no such thing as undesirable work,

01:08:43

only people who see certain kinds of work as undesirable.

01:08:47

- That's a big one.

01:08:48

- And I remember the first time I experienced this

01:08:51

and sorry if I'm stealing your thunder here, Mike.

01:08:53

But I remember the first time I experienced this

01:08:55

for myself with the team, we were hosting a live event

01:08:57

in Atlanta and we're taking a group of people

01:09:00

through our material.

01:09:01

And like I had my office manager who like planned

01:09:06

the whole trip booked the venue, ran the budget,

01:09:11

booked our flights, had our rental cars,

01:09:14

ordered all the material, had it shipped to the venue,

01:09:16

like did all the like she's doing all the back end

01:09:19

behind the scenes stuff.

01:09:21

I have like Isaac who was working with us as helping

01:09:25

with all the products, kind of like a manager,

01:09:27

project manager at that time.

01:09:29

This is several years ago.

01:09:30

And he was like in charge of kind of helping like MC

01:09:34

the thing and lead some of the Q and A.

01:09:37

And then like he was also in charge of like all the technical

01:09:41

stuff like setting up the slides and the sound system

01:09:43

and all that stuff and the audio visual equipment.

01:09:46

And then my job was to like teach the workshop.

01:09:49

So we all fly in and like they drop me off at the hotel.

01:09:52

I order room service.

01:09:53

I'm going over my notes.

01:09:54

Well, they're running around the city like gathering

01:09:56

all the stuff for the snacks and the print material

01:09:59

and like setting up the venue, doing all the chairs,

01:10:01

whatever the next morning, like they go there early

01:10:04

to make sure everything's good to go.

01:10:05

I sleep in, I do a workout.

01:10:07

I eat like a healthy breakfast.

01:10:09

They come and pick me up.

01:10:10

I get there like 30 minutes early.

01:10:12

I deliver, but then I'm on stage all day long,

01:10:16

teaching the workshop.

01:10:18

And then when it's done, I get to leave and go home

01:10:19

and they have to clean up.

01:10:20

And I remember like, I'm like, man, this is awesome.

01:10:24

This is my favorite thing.

01:10:25

Like all I got to sleep in.

01:10:26

I got to hang out at the hotel.

01:10:27

I got to do my workout.

01:10:28

I got to like order room service.

01:10:29

And then I just got to stand on stage and teach all day,

01:10:31

which was like literally like, I loved it.

01:10:33

Like that's my favorite thing to do in my job.

01:10:35

And they're like, oh man, thank God I didn't have to teach

01:10:37

all day.

01:10:38

I just, all I had to do was, you know, I was like, man,

01:10:40

I got to sit in the back and like, you know, hit play

01:10:42

on the sound when we did the pause for like everyone

01:10:45

going through some of the questions in the workbook.

01:10:46

And Jan was like, man, I'm so glad all I had to do

01:10:48

was like plan the thing and like book the venue.

01:10:50

But then once we got there, I just got to hang out and like, have fun and like, you

01:10:53

know, make sure everything was running smoothly.

01:10:55

And so like everyone got to do exactly what they wanted to do.

01:10:59

And I remember for all three of us during our debrief after that event, it was just

01:11:03

like this like mind blowing experience of like, oh yeah, there is no such thing as undesirable

01:11:09

work, only certain tasks that are undesirable to certain people.

01:11:13

Yeah, that's, that's a really cool example.

01:11:17

I'm glad that you you shared that that's kind of the gold standard of the pinnacle that

01:11:22

he's kind of talking about, like all this stuff coming together.

01:11:24

When you've got the right people in the right seats, there is a lot of, a lot of synergy

01:11:28

there as people are able to focus on their strengths.

01:11:32

I'm kind of curious.

01:11:33

He does talk about in the marketing system section that you have to get everybody to

01:11:41

think this way.

01:11:44

It might be related to like the sales piece, but essentially every function of the business

01:11:51

needs to learn to ask these marketing and sales questions.

01:11:57

Do you agree?

01:11:58

And if so, how have you seen that play out in your small business?

01:12:02

Ask me that question in a different way.

01:12:04

Sure.

01:12:05

So in chapter 17, the marketing system, he talks about how most small business owners

01:12:11

suffer from willful disinformation.

01:12:13

They don't care to find things out, right?

01:12:15

So the goal is to find things out, the important piece of information.

01:12:20

This kind of tied back to the critical numbers and things like that that are going to help

01:12:23

you make the right decisions.

01:12:25

However, with the marketing piece specifically, essentially everyone needs to learn to ask

01:12:31

those marketing type questions.

01:12:34

You can't just say, oh, the marketing guy is going to figure out what people want because

01:12:38

customer service is going to be talking to people and they need to be able to have their

01:12:41

antenna up and say, oh, this is what people want because I've heard this sort of stuff.

01:12:45

Right?

01:12:46

So I'm just kind of curious how you've seen that play out in your business and how you

01:12:49

get people to think that way maybe.

01:12:51

Yeah.

01:12:52

So for us, this is huge.

01:12:53

And I realized early on, it's like, okay, I'm not like, I'm not a subvant when it comes

01:13:01

to marketing my products.

01:13:03

I think especially for creative businesses and for the professional creator, there's

01:13:08

this feeling of like, well, if I build it, then they will come.

01:13:12

And I've made this product to scratch my own itch and there's a market for it because,

01:13:18

gosh, if I want it, then surely other people want it.

01:13:20

And sure, we see some of those success stories, but those are one in a million.

01:13:25

And so the other 999,999 of us have to do market research and customer research.

01:13:32

And we need to serve the needs of our customers.

01:13:35

And there should be an overlap with like what you want to do.

01:13:38

Or maybe you do just honestly like want to own some McDonald's.

01:13:41

And it's like, okay, cool.

01:13:42

The customer research has been done for that.

01:13:43

Just like buy a McDonald's or buy a Chick-fil-A.

01:13:46

And there you go.

01:13:47

I would probably buy a Chipotle or Chick-fil-A or maybe both.

01:13:50

I would never buy McDonald's.

01:13:53

But for the rest of us, it's like, we need to do the customer research.

01:13:56

And then we need to do the hard work of like, who actually is buying this stuff?

01:14:01

Why are they buying it?

01:14:03

What is motivating it?

01:14:04

Like, what are they hiring us to do?

01:14:06

Like, what's the actual problem that we're solving for them?

01:14:08

We think it's this, but we actually don't know.

01:14:11

And it's hard work to do the research.

01:14:13

It's hard work to summarize the research.

01:14:17

And then it's a huge, usually it's a huge hit to the ego of the business owner.

01:14:23

Exactly.

01:14:24

To then go, okay, well, actually this is the truth.

01:14:26

This is who our customers are.

01:14:28

This is what they're asking us to help them with.

01:14:30

And we need to double down on that instead of like, no, we're going to do it my way.

01:14:35

And we're going to market it like this.

01:14:36

And we're going to tell my stories.

01:14:37

It's like, you've got to get into the hearts and the minds of your customers.

01:14:42

Because not only is that like how you're going to grow your business through marketing,

01:14:46

but that's how you're going to actually help your customers and serve them.

01:14:50

Not giving them what you want, but giving them what they actually need through understanding

01:14:56

what their needs are.

01:14:57

And I know there's like all, you know, Henry Ford.

01:14:58

But you know, like if I asked my customers what they wanted, it was at a faster horse.

01:15:02

Right.

01:15:03

And so like there's not, you know, it's like, so I made what they needed and I made the

01:15:07

future and I'm awesome.

01:15:08

I'm brilliant.

01:15:09

Right.

01:15:10

Like there, but like none of us are Henry Ford, like Henry Ford was Henry Ford.

01:15:13

And there's so much more to that story.

01:15:15

And so yes, asking the hard questions and getting the clear data and then being willing

01:15:20

to do what it takes to grow your business and to systematize the marketing and to actually

01:15:25

serve your customers.

01:15:27

It's not easy.

01:15:28

It's not easy to do for sure.

01:15:29

Yeah.

01:15:30

I feel like Joanna was really good at this.

01:15:32

I think she called it like a customer heartbeat or a pulse or something like that.

01:15:37

Yeah.

01:15:38

Which was great.

01:15:39

It's just a place every single meeting to bring up.

01:15:41

This is what I'm, I'm hearing.

01:15:42

So the rest of the team was, was aware because if you're just going to go create the marketing

01:15:46

materials in a vacuum, you know, you're going to create a sales page that hits on things

01:15:51

that nobody cares about or wants.

01:15:53

And ultimately that's death of the business.

01:15:56

So yeah.

01:15:57

For sure.

01:15:58

Cool.

01:15:59

Well, let's start to wrap up here.

01:16:02

Normally we've got action items and style and rating.

01:16:06

I'll share a couple of my action items.

01:16:08

If you have any action items that came up during the course of the conversation, feel

01:16:10

free to share those as well.

01:16:12

But I got two specific things that I want to do from reading this book.

01:16:17

Number one, going back to chapter six is to learn to ask what is the opportunity.

01:16:23

Just the stage that I'm in, I've looked at some of the data and basically what kind

01:16:29

of drove me towards Obsidian University was everything obsidian related that I created

01:16:34

or talked about did like 10x the other stuff when I was talking about, well, creativity

01:16:42

or productivity or productivity or things like that.

01:16:44

And that doesn't mean that that's bigger than productivity or creativity, but it means

01:16:48

that those are the people who are following me.

01:16:50

Like that's what they want to hear about.

01:16:51

Right.

01:16:52

That's what I kind of lead into.

01:16:54

But if I just follow that forever without stopping to think about what are the opportunities

01:16:58

that are available to me, I could build something that ultimately nobody wants.

01:17:03

So constantly looking around and asking where I'm at currently, what are the opportunities

01:17:09

and not assuming that the opportunities that were there before are necessarily opportunities

01:17:12

now.

01:17:13

And then related to that, going into my transition into full time creator, I just kind of fell

01:17:21

into it.

01:17:22

Like I've been doing the podcast and stuff on the side.

01:17:23

So it was a bunch of people who've kind of been following me and I had some people on

01:17:26

my newsletter list, but there was no direction with it.

01:17:29

There was no, this is what you're going to get from my shmit when you sign up for his

01:17:33

newsletter.

01:17:34

Right.

01:17:35

So who is my customer?

01:17:36

I have no idea.

01:17:37

I just show up and talk about stuff.

01:17:40

So I need to figure that out too with the go back to like the strategic objective and

01:17:45

figuring out, you know, who am I able to help?

01:17:47

And I feel like I'm making some progress on that, but still got some more work to do.

01:17:51

Yeah, that's, that's huge.

01:17:53

It's hard to do that.

01:17:54

So Mike, like good job.

01:17:55

You're asking the hard questions.

01:17:57

Thank you.

01:17:58

I think, you know, something about this too is just in my experience over the years of

01:18:02

business ownership, it's like these things are cyclical and you know, like you were saying

01:18:06

earlier, it's no like, it's, it's not like, Oh, what is the problem that needs to be solved?

01:18:11

It's like, well, of the 20 that are in front of us, we're going to focus on this one right

01:18:15

now.

01:18:16

And then you'll solve that problem in 18 months later, two, three years later, that problem

01:18:21

is back again, but at a new level.

01:18:24

And so just with more at stake.

01:18:26

And so you're coming back and constantly revisiting these, these challenges, these issues, the

01:18:31

people systems, the marketing systems, etc.

01:18:34

And so he was, I'm even kind of looking here, we didn't get into the chapter 18 here, the

01:18:38

systems strategy.

01:18:39

But one of the points in here is like, you need a system for selling.

01:18:43

You need to be able to grow and market your business on repeat that, you know, quote unquote,

01:18:47

the top of funnel stuff to overcome awareness and to get in front of people and to attract

01:18:54

your ideal customers and also to them, like repel the wrong customers.

01:18:58

And you know, like if you are trying to attract everybody, you're going to attract nobody.

01:19:02

And so just for us over the years, as I've been in the online creative space since 2011,

01:19:07

like things have just changed drastically over the years with SEO, with blogs, RSS, newsletters,

01:19:14

social media, all of this stuff.

01:19:16

And so for us, like right now, like we're coming back to that very, the biggest problem with

01:19:20

us in the business right now is like redesigning and rebuilding our own selling system of,

01:19:27

you know, we, you know, getting deeper and like even more clear on who our ideal customer

01:19:31

is and the ideal outcome that we have for them and the way that we speak to them and

01:19:36

attract to them and, you know, help serve them.

01:19:39

So building that selling system for us is an action that's, that's very top of mind right

01:19:44

now.

01:19:45

And we're actively, you know, we're working with a coach actually to help us solve some

01:19:48

of that stuff, even like right now.

01:19:51

So that's where I'm at.

01:19:52

Awesome.

01:19:53

Yeah.

01:19:54

I feel like we could have talked for two hours about some of this book, but I know you've

01:19:58

got a, you got limited time.

01:20:00

You plan to talk for two hours and it's like, I'm sorry, I can only do 90 minutes.

01:20:04

That's okay.

01:20:05

Before you go though, I do want to make sure we get to a style and rating.

01:20:09

So I'll just briefly go here and then I want to hear what you think about this.

01:20:13

I like this book.

01:20:14

I'm going to rate it four stars.

01:20:16

I don't think it's a great business systems book.

01:20:20

Maybe it was when it was originally written, but I've read several since then that I like

01:20:24

better.

01:20:26

And can you guess the one that I would recommend to people instead because I brought it up

01:20:30

when I worked for you?

01:20:32

Scaling up.

01:20:33

Yeah.

01:20:34

Exactly.

01:20:35

There's a lot more meat on that one and it takes a little bit more work to apply that

01:20:41

to your business.

01:20:42

And it maybe is geared a little bit more towards bigger businesses, but I think it applies

01:20:45

to small businesses too.

01:20:46

I've gone through that with a bunch of a bunch of companies and every single time we go through

01:20:50

the worksheets that are in there, like the seven strata and the strategy section essentially,

01:20:55

there's so much clarity that comes from that format.

01:20:59

So I really do think that that is more practical, more actionable.

01:21:03

And then if you just want the conceptual stuff, there's another one which is kind of like

01:21:06

a mashup of this and traction, which is like the EOS stuff.

01:21:10

It's called the Pinnacle Business Systems or something along those lines.

01:21:14

Basically Pinnacle is like a brand of business development coach that kind of picks and chooses

01:21:20

from the different systems based on your individual needs in your small business.

01:21:25

And I worked with a Pinnacle coach at the last job and I do like their approach.

01:21:31

And the book is actually pretty well written and it's easy to grok and lots of stuff in

01:21:35

there that I feel like is actionable.

01:21:37

But there's some really good stuff in here.

01:21:39

Really help me kind of ask some important questions and wrestle through some things.

01:21:44

So I will rate it four stars.

01:21:46

How about you?

01:21:48

I'm also going to go four stars.

01:21:50

What I really love about this book, well two things.

01:21:53

One, it's very simply written.

01:21:56

So it's written in like, you know, fifth, sixth grader language.

01:21:59

It's easy to read and understand.

01:22:01

And it hits on like a lot of just the mindset shift.

01:22:04

I know like this was kind of my like, you know, theme of the show today, Mike was like

01:22:08

the mindset shifts.

01:22:10

But like that is like it has to start there for as you transition.

01:22:15

If you want to be like a serious business owner and actually have that mature entrepreneurial

01:22:20

perspective, you have to think differently about it.

01:22:23

And I love the way that this book illustrates the shift in those mindsets and helps you

01:22:28

understand like how you're just like literally approaching all of it wrong and why you're

01:22:33

frustrated in your business is all these things.

01:22:35

But yeah, when it comes to actually outlining business systems and giving you like approach,

01:22:42

I'll add two more to that list.

01:22:44

My two favorite that I've read recently.

01:22:47

One is work the system by Sam Carpenter.

01:22:53

Yes.

01:22:54

I keep looking behind me because it's on the bookshelf there.

01:22:56

And then free time by Jenny Blake is a phenomenal book.

01:23:01

Free time is one of the best books I've read in the last year.

01:23:03

She is James become a good friend and she is a phenomenal writer.

01:23:09

Her like in a sea of like drab, sterile business writing, Jenny writes with like buoyancy and

01:23:18

joy and delight that is just so refreshing in that space.

01:23:22

And her book is just a beautiful, beautiful book about systems thinking specifically towards

01:23:28

the entrepreneur.

01:23:29

So I would, I recommend those books as well.

01:23:33

But sometimes you got to be in the right headspace to read those books.

01:23:36

And Emith can get you in the, Emith will get you hungry to build your business systems

01:23:42

and then you go read some other books on how to actually do it.

01:23:45

Or it will completely turn you off to the genre because it's not right for you.

01:23:49

Yeah.

01:23:50

Awesome.

01:23:51

Thanks so much for being on here today, Sean.

01:23:53

This has been a great conversation.

01:23:55

Where can people go to connect with you and learn more about what you're doing?

01:23:59

Yeah.

01:24:00

If any of you like any of the stuff around business, go to the focuscourse.com/boss and

01:24:06

sign up over there for email.

01:24:08

I sent a me mail and then you'll find out about our group program training that we're

01:24:12

doing to help full time business owners run their business on part time hours.

01:24:16

Thanks to systems and clarity.

01:24:19

Awesome.

01:24:20

Well, thank you.

01:24:21

And thank you to everyone who listened.

01:24:24

Not quite sure exactly what's going to happen next episode yet.

01:24:29

So I guess the next book will be a surprise.

01:24:31

The next guest will be a surprise.

01:24:33

But thank you for listening and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.