Speaker:
00:00:00
Everybody tells you to systemize your business, especially me,
Speaker:
00:00:02
but what does it actually mean?
Speaker:
00:00:04
How do you actually do it?
Speaker:
00:00:05
Most people think systemizing means finding the perfect tool
Speaker:
00:00:07
that claims to automate everything.
Speaker:
00:00:09
The most important tools for systemizing are a clock, pencil, and paper.
Speaker:
00:00:13
To systemize, here are the key steps and I'll show you
Speaker:
00:00:15
exactly how to do each of them.
Speaker:
00:00:19
Hi, I'm David Ziembicki, and you're about to learn how to grow from
Speaker:
00:00:21
struggling solopreneur to successful virtual CEO of your own expert business.
Speaker:
00:00:27
Your knowledge and skills can change lives and make the world a better place.
Speaker:
00:00:30
Are you ready to hit the accelerator to scale your results and impact?
Speaker:
00:00:33
Then it's time to build your expert business.
Speaker:
00:00:37
Most of my 25 year career has been about helping organizations from
Speaker:
00:00:40
Fortune 100 and government agencies.
Speaker:
00:00:42
down to small businesses and solopreneurs systemize their business.
Speaker:
00:00:46
The first step is analyzing what you're currently doing.
Speaker:
00:00:48
I worked at Microsoft for 17 years and heard Bill Gates speak many times.
Speaker:
00:00:52
I'm not 100 percent sure this quote is his, but everyone thinks so, and it's
Speaker:
00:00:55
been one of my mantras, so here it is.
Speaker:
00:00:57
He said, The first rule of any technology used in business is that
Speaker:
00:01:00
automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.
Speaker:
00:01:05
The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation
Speaker:
00:01:08
will magnify the inefficiency.
Speaker:
00:01:10
The point is for you to define an efficient process first, before you
Speaker:
00:01:13
start automating or delegating it.
Speaker:
00:01:14
But how do we even know what our processes are?
Speaker:
00:01:16
How do you get started?
Speaker:
00:01:17
Have you ever heard of a time and motion study?
Speaker:
00:01:19
It's a technique that came from the manufacturing world
Speaker:
00:01:21
over a hundred years ago.
Speaker:
00:01:22
Companies were trying to be more efficient, and the starting point
Speaker:
00:01:25
was measuring how much time was being spent on each activity.
Speaker:
00:01:28
The motion part was interesting as it measured how far an assembly line
Speaker:
00:01:31
worker moved to perform their task.
Speaker:
00:01:33
It helped expose issues like, Joe has to walk to the toolbox 22 times during his
Speaker:
00:01:37
shift, and the toolbox is 30 feet away.
Speaker:
00:01:39
If the toolbox was next to Joe, that would save 20 minutes of time every day.
Speaker:
00:01:43
The main idea is to take a typical day, week, or month, and document
Speaker:
00:01:46
what you do and any team members that you have are doing in a granular way.
Speaker:
00:01:50
So step one is documenting the current processes or work they are doing.
Speaker:
00:01:53
At a high level first, not detailed SOPs unless you already have them.
Speaker:
00:01:56
Step two is then capturing the time spent on each of the main
Speaker:
00:01:59
tasks and processes and by whom.
Speaker:
00:02:01
Step three is highlighting the ones that are recurring.
Speaker:
00:02:04
What does that look like?
Speaker:
00:02:04
This is where our trusty old clock, pencil, and paper come in.
Speaker:
00:02:07
Every 30 minutes or so, write down the time and what you're working on.
Speaker:
00:02:10
It can be as simple as planning content or answering support emails.
Speaker:
00:02:14
If you make a simple table, you can also capture what tool, if any,
Speaker:
00:02:17
you're using for the given task.
Speaker:
00:02:19
You can also note which of the nine essential online business
Speaker:
00:02:21
systems that I talk about that each piece of work aligns to.
Speaker:
00:02:24
I know this sounds boring, but the results will shock you.
Speaker:
00:02:26
Very quickly, you'll see where your time is going, how many tools you're
Speaker:
00:02:29
using, and which of the nine essential systems you spend most of your time on.
Speaker:
00:02:32
If you do this over a week or a month, you'll also capture all the recurring
Speaker:
00:02:35
tasks that you do in your business.
Speaker:
00:02:36
This is critical for capturing the current state of your business.
Speaker:
00:02:39
At this point, I hope you're noticing a major omission so far.
Speaker:
00:02:42
We've only captured what you are doing, not what you should or
Speaker:
00:02:45
want to do to grow your business.
Speaker:
00:02:47
While you're doing your time and motion study, also write down the things you
Speaker:
00:02:50
wish you had the time or people to do.
Speaker:
00:02:52
We need this baseline of what you are doing and what you
Speaker:
00:02:54
should do for the next steps.
Speaker:
00:02:56
Next is design.
Speaker:
00:02:57
At this point, you want to define the desired state for your business.
Speaker:
00:03:00
What needs to happen every day, week, or month to generate the
Speaker:
00:03:03
output you need to reach your goals.
Speaker:
00:03:05
That's what systemization is.
Speaker:
00:03:06
Defining everything in your business in terms of the most efficient
Speaker:
00:03:10
processes, procedures, and tools that generate the desired result.
Speaker:
00:03:13
At the highest level, there are things like create a product,
Speaker:
00:03:16
or market the product, sell the product, and deliver the product.
Speaker:
00:03:19
Then from there, you break them down further.
Speaker:
00:03:21
Within each, there are many sub processes.
Speaker:
00:03:23
Take the content marketing area that I talk about a lot.
Speaker:
00:03:25
If your current process is random and you do things differently each time, you
Speaker:
00:03:28
do all the work yourself and jump from tool to tool changing things each time,
Speaker:
00:03:32
you don't have a system, you have a mess.
Speaker:
00:03:34
If you try to apply tools or delegation to that mess, as Bill G would say,
Speaker:
00:03:37
you're going to amplify the mess.
Speaker:
00:03:39
Instead, you want to reverse engineer success.
Speaker:
00:03:41
What needs to be produced each month for your business to be successful?
Speaker:
00:03:44
It could be as simple as, you know, a content system.
Speaker:
00:03:47
I need to publish weekly and repurpose so that I have 100 social media posts going
Speaker:
00:03:51
out across all my channels each week.
Speaker:
00:03:53
In a traffic system, it could be, I need to design and run two ad campaigns, one
Speaker:
00:03:57
for awareness, one for conversion, to make sure people see my content and offers.
Speaker:
00:04:00
Cheers.
Speaker:
00:04:01
The key is defining that ideal month of outcomes that would deliver
Speaker:
00:04:04
the business results you need, then reverse engineer success.
Speaker:
00:04:07
For the content system, what are the processes and procedures
Speaker:
00:04:09
needed to generate and repurpose content at that scale?
Speaker:
00:04:12
Same for the rest, what's needed in the traffic, funnel, sales, and other areas?
Speaker:
00:04:15
Writing that down is essential.
Speaker:
00:04:16
Then another pass tries to simplify and streamline the
Speaker:
00:04:19
process as much as possible.
Speaker:
00:04:20
Take the data from your time in motion study and ask what can be eliminated.
Speaker:
00:04:23
When I started building a content team, this is what I did first.
Speaker:
00:04:26
I could see that I was creating thumbnails each week, editing
Speaker:
00:04:28
videos, writing captions, spending lots of time scheduling posts.
Speaker:
00:04:31
Going through the above process showed everything that
Speaker:
00:04:34
needed to happen each week.
Speaker:
00:04:35
The next step was determining what could be automated.
Speaker:
00:04:37
For automation, at this point you've analyzed what you've been doing,
Speaker:
00:04:40
you've documented what you should be doing, and you've eliminated
Speaker:
00:04:43
what you shouldn't be doing.
Speaker:
00:04:44
You've done what Bill Gates suggested.
Speaker:
00:04:45
You've defined a streamlined process.
Speaker:
00:04:47
Now it's time to apply technology.
Speaker:
00:04:49
The next pass is looking at all your plan, processes, and procedures
Speaker:
00:04:52
to identify what can be automated.
Speaker:
00:04:53
I'll cover this in depth in future videos, but here are a
Speaker:
00:04:56
few simple examples for now.
Speaker:
00:04:57
Look for recurring tasks that can be easily automated.
Speaker:
00:05:00
An example is generating good transcripts from your content to
Speaker:
00:05:02
use as blog posts or social media.
Speaker:
00:05:04
You can easily have an automation that looks for new video files
Speaker:
00:05:06
in a given folder, triggers an automation to transcribe them.
Speaker:
00:05:09
Then a notification to a team member to review.
Speaker:
00:05:11
It's the same thing for social media scheduling.
Speaker:
00:05:13
You can set up tools such that every time you create a post, it gets added
Speaker:
00:05:16
to a queue to repost in the future.
Speaker:
00:05:18
The key here is the compounding benefits of more automation.
Speaker:
00:05:20
Even if just once a week you take a recurring task and automate
Speaker:
00:05:23
it, the benefits stack quickly.
Speaker:
00:05:24
If you've been doing this for a long time, like I have, you'll notice that
Speaker:
00:05:27
eventually you hit a point where the work required to 100 percent automate
Speaker:
00:05:30
a complex process starts to exceed the cost of just paying someone to do it.
Speaker:
00:05:34
And that's where the final step of systemizing comes in.
Speaker:
00:05:36
Delegating.
Speaker:
00:05:37
For this step, we have a simple rule.
Speaker:
00:05:39
If the given process or task is strategic to your business and is a CEO
Speaker:
00:05:42
level activity, then you should do it.
Speaker:
00:05:44
Everything else should be automated or delegated.
Speaker:
00:05:46
Since you already automated what could be in the previous step, the
Speaker:
00:05:49
final one is delegating all the remaining work to team members,
Speaker:
00:05:51
freelancers, or service providers.
Speaker:
00:05:53
As you know from my other content, I believe in fractional teams
Speaker:
00:05:56
as the first phase of delegating in your online business.
Speaker:
00:05:59
The benefit of a fractional team is you get access to a broader and deeper
Speaker:
00:06:02
set of people and skills than trying to find one individual or virtual
Speaker:
00:06:05
assistant that tries to do everything.
Speaker:
00:06:07
Regardless, your work to analyze, design, document, and automate your
Speaker:
00:06:10
systems and processes will help you with your delegation efforts dramatically.
Speaker:
00:06:14
As you bring team members on, you'll know exactly where to put them in
Speaker:
00:06:17
your business, which processes and procedures to delegate to them, and what
Speaker:
00:06:20
the expected outputs are, and so on.
Speaker:
00:06:22
So what's the result?
Speaker:
00:06:23
A fully systemized business.
Speaker:
00:06:25
It may take a few months or even a year to do everything I've talked about in
Speaker:
00:06:28
this video, but consider the end result.
Speaker:
00:06:29
You would be working only on strategic CEO level activities.
Speaker:
00:06:33
Every process that is critical to reaching your business goals
Speaker:
00:06:35
has been designed and documented.
Speaker:
00:06:37
Everything that can be automated has been automated.
Speaker:
00:06:39
And everything that can't be automated has been delegated.
Speaker:
00:06:41
That is priceless.
Speaker:
00:06:42
The online business holy grail.
00:00:00
Everybody tells you to systemize your business, especially me,
Speaker:
00:00:02
but what does it actually mean?
Speaker:
00:00:04
How do you actually do it?
Speaker:
00:00:05
Most people think systemizing means finding the perfect tool
Speaker:
00:00:07
that claims to automate everything.
Speaker:
00:00:09
The most important tools for systemizing are a clock, pencil, and paper.
Speaker:
00:00:13
To systemize, here are the key steps and I'll show you
Speaker:
00:00:15
exactly how to do each of them.
Speaker:
00:00:19
Hi, I'm David Ziembicki, and you're about to learn how to grow from
Speaker:
00:00:21
struggling solopreneur to successful virtual CEO of your own expert business.
Speaker:
00:00:27
Your knowledge and skills can change lives and make the world a better place.
Speaker:
00:00:30
Are you ready to hit the accelerator to scale your results and impact?
Speaker:
00:00:33
Then it's time to build your expert business.
Speaker:
00:00:37
Most of my 25 year career has been about helping organizations from
Speaker:
00:00:40
Fortune 100 and government agencies.
Speaker:
00:00:42
down to small businesses and solopreneurs systemize their business.
Speaker:
00:00:46
The first step is analyzing what you're currently doing.
Speaker:
00:00:48
I worked at Microsoft for 17 years and heard Bill Gates speak many times.
Speaker:
00:00:52
I'm not 100 percent sure this quote is his, but everyone thinks so, and it's
Speaker:
00:00:55
been one of my mantras, so here it is.
Speaker:
00:00:57
He said, The first rule of any technology used in business is that
Speaker:
00:01:00
automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.
Speaker:
00:01:05
The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation
Speaker:
00:01:08
will magnify the inefficiency.
Speaker:
00:01:10
The point is for you to define an efficient process first, before you
Speaker:
00:01:13
start automating or delegating it.
Speaker:
00:01:14
But how do we even know what our processes are?
Speaker:
00:01:16
How do you get started?
Speaker:
00:01:17
Have you ever heard of a time and motion study?
Speaker:
00:01:19
It's a technique that came from the manufacturing world
Speaker:
00:01:21
over a hundred years ago.
Speaker:
00:01:22
Companies were trying to be more efficient, and the starting point
Speaker:
00:01:25
was measuring how much time was being spent on each activity.
Speaker:
00:01:28
The motion part was interesting as it measured how far an assembly line
Speaker:
00:01:31
worker moved to perform their task.
Speaker:
00:01:33
It helped expose issues like, Joe has to walk to the toolbox 22 times during his
Speaker:
00:01:37
shift, and the toolbox is 30 feet away.
Speaker:
00:01:39
If the toolbox was next to Joe, that would save 20 minutes of time every day.
Speaker:
00:01:43
The main idea is to take a typical day, week, or month, and document
Speaker:
00:01:46
what you do and any team members that you have are doing in a granular way.
Speaker:
00:01:50
So step one is documenting the current processes or work they are doing.
Speaker:
00:01:53
At a high level first, not detailed SOPs unless you already have them.
Speaker:
00:01:56
Step two is then capturing the time spent on each of the main
Speaker:
00:01:59
tasks and processes and by whom.
Speaker:
00:02:01
Step three is highlighting the ones that are recurring.
Speaker:
00:02:04
What does that look like?
Speaker:
00:02:04
This is where our trusty old clock, pencil, and paper come in.
Speaker:
00:02:07
Every 30 minutes or so, write down the time and what you're working on.
Speaker:
00:02:10
It can be as simple as planning content or answering support emails.
Speaker:
00:02:14
If you make a simple table, you can also capture what tool, if any,
Speaker:
00:02:17
you're using for the given task.
Speaker:
00:02:19
You can also note which of the nine essential online business
Speaker:
00:02:21
systems that I talk about that each piece of work aligns to.
Speaker:
00:02:24
I know this sounds boring, but the results will shock you.
Speaker:
00:02:26
Very quickly, you'll see where your time is going, how many tools you're
Speaker:
00:02:29
using, and which of the nine essential systems you spend most of your time on.
Speaker:
00:02:32
If you do this over a week or a month, you'll also capture all the recurring
Speaker:
00:02:35
tasks that you do in your business.
Speaker:
00:02:36
This is critical for capturing the current state of your business.
Speaker:
00:02:39
At this point, I hope you're noticing a major omission so far.
Speaker:
00:02:42
We've only captured what you are doing, not what you should or
Speaker:
00:02:45
want to do to grow your business.
Speaker:
00:02:47
While you're doing your time and motion study, also write down the things you
Speaker:
00:02:50
wish you had the time or people to do.
Speaker:
00:02:52
We need this baseline of what you are doing and what you
Speaker:
00:02:54
should do for the next steps.
Speaker:
00:02:56
Next is design.
Speaker:
00:02:57
At this point, you want to define the desired state for your business.
Speaker:
00:03:00
What needs to happen every day, week, or month to generate the
Speaker:
00:03:03
output you need to reach your goals.
Speaker:
00:03:05
That's what systemization is.
Speaker:
00:03:06
Defining everything in your business in terms of the most efficient
Speaker:
00:03:10
processes, procedures, and tools that generate the desired result.
Speaker:
00:03:13
At the highest level, there are things like create a product,
Speaker:
00:03:16
or market the product, sell the product, and deliver the product.
Speaker:
00:03:19
Then from there, you break them down further.
Speaker:
00:03:21
Within each, there are many sub processes.
Speaker:
00:03:23
Take the content marketing area that I talk about a lot.
Speaker:
00:03:25
If your current process is random and you do things differently each time, you
Speaker:
00:03:28
do all the work yourself and jump from tool to tool changing things each time,
Speaker:
00:03:32
you don't have a system, you have a mess.
Speaker:
00:03:34
If you try to apply tools or delegation to that mess, as Bill G would say,
Speaker:
00:03:37
you're going to amplify the mess.
Speaker:
00:03:39
Instead, you want to reverse engineer success.
Speaker:
00:03:41
What needs to be produced each month for your business to be successful?
Speaker:
00:03:44
It could be as simple as, you know, a content system.
Speaker:
00:03:47
I need to publish weekly and repurpose so that I have 100 social media posts going
Speaker:
00:03:51
out across all my channels each week.
Speaker:
00:03:53
In a traffic system, it could be, I need to design and run two ad campaigns, one
Speaker:
00:03:57
for awareness, one for conversion, to make sure people see my content and offers.
Speaker:
00:04:00
Cheers.
Speaker:
00:04:01
The key is defining that ideal month of outcomes that would deliver
Speaker:
00:04:04
the business results you need, then reverse engineer success.
Speaker:
00:04:07
For the content system, what are the processes and procedures
Speaker:
00:04:09
needed to generate and repurpose content at that scale?
Speaker:
00:04:12
Same for the rest, what's needed in the traffic, funnel, sales, and other areas?
Speaker:
00:04:15
Writing that down is essential.
Speaker:
00:04:16
Then another pass tries to simplify and streamline the
Speaker:
00:04:19
process as much as possible.
Speaker:
00:04:20
Take the data from your time in motion study and ask what can be eliminated.
Speaker:
00:04:23
When I started building a content team, this is what I did first.
Speaker:
00:04:26
I could see that I was creating thumbnails each week, editing
Speaker:
00:04:28
videos, writing captions, spending lots of time scheduling posts.
Speaker:
00:04:31
Going through the above process showed everything that
Speaker:
00:04:34
needed to happen each week.
Speaker:
00:04:35
The next step was determining what could be automated.
Speaker:
00:04:37
For automation, at this point you've analyzed what you've been doing,
Speaker:
00:04:40
you've documented what you should be doing, and you've eliminated
Speaker:
00:04:43
what you shouldn't be doing.
Speaker:
00:04:44
You've done what Bill Gates suggested.
Speaker:
00:04:45
You've defined a streamlined process.
Speaker:
00:04:47
Now it's time to apply technology.
Speaker:
00:04:49
The next pass is looking at all your plan, processes, and procedures
Speaker:
00:04:52
to identify what can be automated.
Speaker:
00:04:53
I'll cover this in depth in future videos, but here are a
Speaker:
00:04:56
few simple examples for now.
Speaker:
00:04:57
Look for recurring tasks that can be easily automated.
Speaker:
00:05:00
An example is generating good transcripts from your content to
Speaker:
00:05:02
use as blog posts or social media.
Speaker:
00:05:04
You can easily have an automation that looks for new video files
Speaker:
00:05:06
in a given folder, triggers an automation to transcribe them.
Speaker:
00:05:09
Then a notification to a team member to review.
Speaker:
00:05:11
It's the same thing for social media scheduling.
Speaker:
00:05:13
You can set up tools such that every time you create a post, it gets added
Speaker:
00:05:16
to a queue to repost in the future.
Speaker:
00:05:18
The key here is the compounding benefits of more automation.
Speaker:
00:05:20
Even if just once a week you take a recurring task and automate
Speaker:
00:05:23
it, the benefits stack quickly.
Speaker:
00:05:24
If you've been doing this for a long time, like I have, you'll notice that
Speaker:
00:05:27
eventually you hit a point where the work required to 100 percent automate
Speaker:
00:05:30
a complex process starts to exceed the cost of just paying someone to do it.
Speaker:
00:05:34
And that's where the final step of systemizing comes in.
Speaker:
00:05:36
Delegating.
Speaker:
00:05:37
For this step, we have a simple rule.
Speaker:
00:05:39
If the given process or task is strategic to your business and is a CEO
Speaker:
00:05:42
level activity, then you should do it.
Speaker:
00:05:44
Everything else should be automated or delegated.
Speaker:
00:05:46
Since you already automated what could be in the previous step, the
Speaker:
00:05:49
final one is delegating all the remaining work to team members,
Speaker:
00:05:51
freelancers, or service providers.
Speaker:
00:05:53
As you know from my other content, I believe in fractional teams
Speaker:
00:05:56
as the first phase of delegating in your online business.
Speaker:
00:05:59
The benefit of a fractional team is you get access to a broader and deeper
Speaker:
00:06:02
set of people and skills than trying to find one individual or virtual
Speaker:
00:06:05
assistant that tries to do everything.
Speaker:
00:06:07
Regardless, your work to analyze, design, document, and automate your
Speaker:
00:06:10
systems and processes will help you with your delegation efforts dramatically.
Speaker:
00:06:14
As you bring team members on, you'll know exactly where to put them in
Speaker:
00:06:17
your business, which processes and procedures to delegate to them, and what
Speaker:
00:06:20
the expected outputs are, and so on.
Speaker:
00:06:22
So what's the result?
Speaker:
00:06:23
A fully systemized business.
Speaker:
00:06:25
It may take a few months or even a year to do everything I've talked about in
Speaker:
00:06:28
this video, but consider the end result.
Speaker:
00:06:29
You would be working only on strategic CEO level activities.
Speaker:
00:06:33
Every process that is critical to reaching your business goals
Speaker:
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has been designed and documented.
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Everything that can be automated has been automated.
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And everything that can't be automated has been delegated.
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That is priceless.
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The online business holy grail.
