Business Systems for Growth: How to Build a High-Performance Business That Runs Without You with Barry Cryan

Business systems for growth. How to build a high performance business that runs without you. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights to help you grow your business. We discover little bits of brilliance from guests, including today’s Barry Kre, who specializes in helping business owners implement systems that create high performance businesses.

Now lots of questions that you’ve got to answer. Lots of questions that you wanna ask that I’m going to get answered. I can guarantee for you. ’cause we are gonna learn all about businesses that struggle and how to make them perform at a high performance level. We are going to match that up with ideas around athlete.

Some things that you can understand, and the fact of the matter is there are some really great insights coming out of this episode that are going to make you understand how you can perform at a high level more consistently, and how you can implement systems that can ensure that you do that and find that work life balance.

Yes, that controversial subject work-life balance. We’re gonna discuss all that whole more. Let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and we’re traveling all around the world. This time round we’re going across to Ireland and welcome Barry crying to the program. Thank you so much for being a part of it.

Thanks a million. I just need GR here.

Now we are gonna cover a lot of territory today because I’ve got some insights into what sort of things you do and what you cover, and there’s a lot for people to listen into.

But let’s just start off by allowing you to introduce yourself to everybody.

Yeah. So look at Anthony. I’m gonna high performance positivity coach for small business owners. Generally what I’m doing is put systems and structures in place for them so they can get the bulk outta themselves and therefore get the most outta their

business.

And there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to that sort of area. And I’m gonna start at the very beginning of that ’cause you talk about high performance. And we mostly refer to high performance, in terms of athletes or machinery is high performance achievable in business in the first place and what actually defines high performance?

Yeah. Look, ab absolutely. First of all, absolutely it is. It’s we can operate at different levels. It could be in sport, it could be, in a personal life, it could be in business as well. And high performance really is, it’s maximum life and what you can do with your potential, so some people are operating at a 2.0, some days they might be operating at a 8.0.

Other days high performance really is getting as close to that bar as, as close to that 10.0 version of yourself. As you can, and that, that’s where my goal is. Again, I talked about systems there and structures of without those you can never really consistently achieve your maximum.

And that’s the same in our personal lives or the athlete that’s trainer for the Olympics. They have to follow a process. They have to follow a system because when you do, you get predictable outcomes. And that’s literally what we’re, what we talk about is if you’re predictable, possible, predictable systems, you wanna get predictable outcomes.

And ultimately, if you can get the most out of yourself, then you’re gonna get the most out of whatever it is you’re doing, be it, sport or be it business as well. Co it’s absolutely 100% achievable without systems and structures. It’s up to the lap of the guards really, whether you get there or whether you, how much you get out of yourself.

When your system is in place. Correct those predictable outcomes and ultimately get as close to that 10.0 version of yourself as possible.

Before we delve into systems and perhaps some of your background to getting there, let me just ask you this question because you’ve, drawn the parallel to athletes, for example, training for the Olympics, if you are running the a hundred meters or a marathon or whatever sport it is that you are doing.

If you are not hitting that ideal, you know your best of time every single time you go out there, that just isn’t really possible. And that, in football teams as well. Commonly you’re building up to the end of season to a grand final series. That’s, it’s a matter of building up to that point.

So when you talk about high performance and the expectations of business, you can’t be going in, I imagine and expecting that you’re gonna be able to perform at that 10, 10 out of 10 level on an everyday basis because you’re going to have some buildup and some fluctuations. Yes. So

it’s like the way you look at it is it’s number one what’s, what are you going after?

So if there’s Olympics, it’s a certain time or maybe a certain place in life or in business, it’s certain goals. So what we do is we start with the end of mind and look, okay what is your goal here? What are we aiming for? And then it’s reversal engineer, it’s reversal engineering back from that point then to say, okay, what is that I need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to get there?

And then it’s, yes, it is, it’s that 10.0 of where you’re at. So where you’re at now versus where you’re gonna be at six months or six years is gonna be completely different. So operating at that optimal level of where you’re at right now, so you can ultimately get there for a quicker. And you’re building in that consistency because if you have, again, if you think about it you head out the road and you don’t have an end destination in mind.

You’re gonna end up anywhere. So it’s half that end point and reverse engineering back from that to say okay, what do you think need to look like on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in order for me to achieve that end outcome? And it’s then it’s built on structures around yourself in order for you to be at that.

Best version of yourself as consistently as possible. And yes, that’s gonna change over time. That, that, that think he always listening to him and he was talking about, somebody asked him, who’s your hero in in 10 years time? And he said look at, I’ll come back to you on, I said, he met the guy a couple of months later anyways.

And he said, look at who’s your hero on 10 years time? He said, my hero on 10 years time, but it’s me. And he said I am my hero. On 10 years I’ve that future word for me. Okay. And that’s what it is. It’s like the person that you meet in five or 10 years time, that version of you is gonna be different because you’re gonna evolve.

But it’s been, that best version of ourselves from now means we’re gonna be a far better version of ourselves in 10 years time. So we’re being the 10.0 version of where we are now, and again, that’s gonna change in a year, five years. 10, 10 years. But it’s consistently being that version of our status.

Of what we’re possible, of what’s possible and what’s what we’re capable of. Right now.

Now just, I’m just gonna break for just a second there. We’re getting a little, I’m getting a little bit of dropouts there, but I’ll keep pushing on, just so you know that if I pause for a moment or two, it’s just, there seems to be a little bit of, I have to press that internet lag, but we’ll be good to press that.

Why don’t you talk to me a little bit about your background as well, because I think before we can understand how you can add the value here in this is, let’s understand where you’ve come from to get you to that point where you can actually give people this advice. So tell me where it all began for you, what was the career journey that you’ve been on?

So basically my own background basically I was a safety engineer. I worked across the pharmaceutical industry here in Ireland as a safety engineer at, that’s literally. My own background and never, like always just focused and blinkered on my own career and what I was doing. And things changed for me.

I remember I just woke up one morning. I felt like almost absolutely like symptoms, aches and pains spiraled into worsening type symptoms. Brain fog, short term memory loss, real chronic fatigue. Over a period of weeks and months, it just started getting worse and worse.

And I couldn’t really find any answers what was happening. To me I couldn’t find, any solutions because doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. And I was not performing out at all. I was struggling to get ideas work done. I used to have to, lock myself in a room for maybe.

15, 20 minutes trying to rest my eyes so I could recharge myself to go again for the next maybe 90 minutes or two hours. That’s the only way I could actually get through my day as I go home that evening, fall into bed, rinse and repeat. The next day I was probably getting about one day’s work done really in every five.

So I was, really not performing for them. I was like I like number one, I can’t, I’m not doing my job effectively. Number two, I, going to struggle, struggling to find answers and solutions here to what’s actually wrong with me. And actually went on for over two and a half years, and I was like, I have to find a better way to get more outta myself, with my reduced capacity.

So I was looking out and I was like, okay, who out there is doing, what I want to do with, at a much higher level? And it was like, I looked out in industry and looked at the likes that Richard Brads and the likes of these guys, the house, Branson is over 500 companies and.

Like how does he operate in aesthetic that allows them to do that and get so much more outta the time that he’s putting in? So that’s where I went, start going down the whole rabbit hole of performs productivity. And to get an understanding of I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. What are people doing?

That, that may help me. So I started belt battle test on some of their strategy, going down the whole Robin Hole at workshops from book and seminars and YouTube and literally taking strategies, testing it, implemented it, scared what didn’t work, take what did work. And eventually I started to see some commonalities between how the best in business do live.

I started applying then to my days and eventually I got to a point where I was getting so much more outta the time that I was putting in. I was actually getting about five days work done in every one at the end and not while I was still as, while I was still sick and looking for answers and solutions.

So I was at a completely different level of performance first with where I was and I didn’t think anything I was, I just. Went about my own work. I was still knocking on doors looking for ads for solutions. Anyways, two and a half years went by and eventually I got to the point where I was like, really, I was seriously worried because it was getting worse and worse.

So I had no short term memory whatsoever. I came across a local newspaper here and there was a woman on the paper talking about how she had never touched symptoms to myself. Just through a kind of series of coincidences, I got in contact with her. She was actually getting treated for this autoimmune condition that she had at the time.

She got me in there with her consultant. I got tested and sure enough I turned out that I had the same autoimmune condition as her. So I ended up, because the, that there isn’t much specialist knowledge in Ireland. All it, I ended up at the Czech Republic for a month, basically in a room by myself, and it gave me a lot of time to pause and think about my life, and I was at that point then where I was like I have tools and systems here and I looked around thinking about the office back at home and I was like this person is operating off sticky notes and this person, has a bit of a list and this person has no system whatsoever.

And I was like, but there is a better way. Maybe people don’t realize there’s a better way. I didn’t until I had to no choice but to count that go down this rabbit hole. So I started documenting things a bit more formally over there. Started helping out a few people when I came back, just rined, stuff like that.

And then that kind evolve then over COVID, whereas I started like seeing them get results and I was like, okay, maybe I should get this stuff out to a wider audience. Start putting out free stuff on online, doing free master classes. And that evolved over time then into the business coaching program.

That I have now. So it was just never started out at all, was created for my own need. I just evolved from that end into something that now I know how to people and that’s what I do.

It’s a fascinating journey and it’s one that I think that’s the interesting thing about someone such as yourself is that when you’ve experienced it. And you’ve ridden through that and delivering that. It’s so different to what is traditionally the method of coaches, which is, look, I’ve learned how to be a coach and I’m going to tell you stuff.

And there’s a lot of coaches out there that perhaps fall into that category. And so when I think when you’ve lived and breathed it, it’s a different beast.

Or not 100%. Yeah, 100%. I’ve, like if one person that came to before and they were like, yo, show me your, your coaching certificate and all this sort of stuff.

And like you can have certificate coming out the, co coming out the door work, but it’s really, it’s what you do, does it work? And there are people getting results from it. That’s the core thing. And often case with it’s created from your own need. That you’re damn sure that works because you have that, that practical hands-on experience of it.

Actually you need this. You implement it yourself and seeing it work as opposed to here’s theory, go now and try it for yourself.

Tell me how much is adapting and changing? ’cause there’s one thing when you build something around what suits you and everyone is, has their own individual quirks and backgrounds and feelings and all the rest of it That makes us human. And so with all the best of intentions, what works for you may not work for me.

So how do you find that balance and how much do you have? You had to tweak things over a period of time.

So I suppose first of all it’s like where I started and evolved and came from. I had really great opportunities to actually learn what helped other people. Then because of the free stuff I was putting out.

I would be able to adapt and change and tweak things. It’s based on feedback, based on how I see people implemented, based on see where I could actually improve on this and make things better. But at the it’s all based around one core framework. I call it my FEST productivity format and the framework, it’s the same framework for everybody, but it’s the inputs into that framework that gets the framework to work.

Okay. The first thing we do is, okay, it’s what I call our time officially accelerator, which is where we have to see, okay, exactly where you’re at. Okay. What’s baseline looking and what? What’s happening in the business right now? What’s happening in your days? What’s the ROI from the time that you’re putting in?

Where is your energy going? Where’s your time going? What are the outputs? As in where do you ultimately want to be? What’s the vision for the business? What’s the vision for your life? What are your goals? What are the kind of things that. You want to achieve? What are the milestones? And basically reverse the engineer all that back.

Okay. And we build it into a complete performance blueprint that we can actually build that framework around that system around. So the framework is the same for everybody else because you have to have a framework in order for you to get predictable results. But if the inputs into that framework that gets it to work, the inputs, which are different for all of us that gets it to work and then it’s after that, it’s I often think of us like that.

The toddler is trying to get the square peg in the square hole. It will go in there, but it’s dexterity isn’t informed and it’s like we have to tweak and adjust until look at that square peg goes in there and then that’s where people start to really see the benefits. For them it will fit, but as we’re all human.

We need to tweak and adapt it slightly to the individual. Then, ah, even after that point,

I wanna get into the whole idea of creating those. Systems and the tweaking of things as they do it. But I think there’s a, there’s an important aspect to talk about as well as you building towards this, and it’s something that I know you, you have front and center even on your website, which is the reference to work-life balance.

And this is, this has been a bit of a hot topic that I’ve had over the years with people because it’s a terminology within itself that is sometimes controversial, let’s just say. Yeah. I’ve posted in the past and said, work life balance and I’ve been, wrapped over the knuckles saying there’s no such thing.

What’s your take on that whole idea of work-life balance? Is it just an easy term that really means some, doesn’t really mean balance. Or what, how do you see it? So

In terms of work life balance I think there, there are seasons in our life as well. So you have this big thing that you want to achieve in the next week or the next month.

You sometimes it is, it’s working harder. It’s working longer. It, as long as it’s a season, as long as it feeds into the bigger picture, doesn’t mean you have to pin it at, 5:00 PM every single day. There’s days where social can go off track. There’s where you need to pivot or adjust. So it’s looking at the bigger picture of your life vision and ultimately what do you want to achieve and what do you want things to look like?

And it’s really building in place processes that, that allows you to achieve those outcomes where it’s not gonna impact on your health or your energy or your family or any of those other things in your life. So it’s about taking holistic look at everything and then designing that future vision of what that would look like.

Reverse engineering back from that point then. And then that’s it’s are you working? How are you working? Smart. Okay. It’s if you’re, if you have to put in, seven to 80 hours a week every week, and you’ve been doing that for, the last six months or the last five years, or the last 10 years, there there’s something wrong somewhere.

There’s something missing somewhere. So definitely it’s it has to be a, a holistic look at everything. In order for you to achieve, what you want to achieve without burning the candle or, sacrificing your personal time or your family time. And then I was saying maybe a time there is a fees in the way you need to put the extra hours or extra time that has to feed into the bigger picture.

So it’s it’s all about the bigger picture and where that actually fits into it.

Yeah, that’s it. It is true what you say in terms of seasonal, different stages of life, right? It’s can make a big difference when you’re on your own. It’s much easier to put more time into work potentially. When you’ve, as you maybe get married or certainly have children, once children come into the picture, it completely changes your perspective on things because you do want to spend more time with with your child, which means, invariably when they’re particularly young, it means you actually have to be home or available at least at certain times of the day.

’cause there’s no good coming home at eight o’clock at night and the child’s in bed at seven o’clock. It’s, there are lots of those things that come into the picture. So part of it is adapting. I imagine as well to, to where you’re at in your life and where your business wants and needs to be.

Yeah, it is, of course. It’s, yeah, there, there’s like that, for example, if you’re a startup business, then absolutely it’s gonna take more time. It’s gonna take more energy versus the business that’s established. So it just depends where you’re at. But the core part of it is it has to be. You have to be working as smartly as possible within the relevance of, what you want to achieve.

I’ve had people come to me and they could absolutely kill it for, a solid 12 hour day and focus Absolutely maximize their output, and then they’re flat as a pancake for five days after. It has to be sustainable as well. What you’re doing, you have to be smarter. And it’s a bit like we talked about athletes earlier.

Yes, we need to sprint, but we need that recovery time as well. So there has to be a delta into the picture. If we’re not getting recovery time, guess what? We’re not gonna be as effective tomorrow. And then we try to outwork that by working landlord tomorrow, and then we, therefore we get less recovery time and then we get into this vicious loop.

So that’s what that has to be considered as that.

I, I hear what you’re saying and I think that the trick, which is the next part of the conversation is getting your systems in place, right? It’s actually how do you actually make this possible so your business can function? Because the ultimate dream, of course, for most solo business O operators is how do you get it to a point where the business can operate without you, so that you can take that, holiday or.

Or it might just be taking some time off during the week so you don’t have to work five days a week, whatever it looks like for you. That’s the dream certainly at an initial point. So how important is it to find those systems? How easy is it to find those systems so they, is that something you can coach at a high level or is that getting into the nitty gritty?

Yeah look, it’s like a game. That’s what is it you want to achieve in your life? And everything revolves around systems, like everything, because systems must be reduced. The amount of micro decisions we’re making, systems take away a reliance of willpower or discipline or motivation or all these things that are really fleet things that come and go over time at the ent, they explode.

So what is it you want to achieve? For me, say in my personal life, I try to avoid sweets and sugar. Stuff like that, Monday to Friday. And if I didn’t have a system in place for that, I’d always be making my decisions. Will I have it now? Will I have it later? Will I, how much of it will I have? And then I’ll clear it in because sheer decision fatigue.

So instead, my system is, I don’t have it in the house Monday to Friday. My only decision is when I buy, when I go to the shop, the weekend. So that’s reduced hundreds of micro decisions across my week, down to one decision. Okay? That’s a system. So it really is what are you looking to achieve? Again, start with the interwind and reverse engineer back from that, okay?

To see, okay, in order for me to achieve this, what systems do I need to actually build around me to it to enable, let me to do the thing that I need to do. Yes, thought it could be personal review systems, it could be, systems for business. But everything comes down to systems. If you want to achieve a predictable outcome, then you have to create a system around you that enables you to do that.

Yeah, I, it’s. It’s easy to talk about. It’s difficult to implement, isn’t it? Those little things that can make a difference, like you said trying to identify those things that derail you. I know I’ve just been doing that myself in the last couple of days and came to this, realization I knew was always there that I was being dictated to by my phone and that I needed to turn the notifications off on my phone like permanently.

And it’s actually takes a little bit of getting used to when you’re making some of those sorts of changes because I had this feeling when I did go and check my messages and go, oh my goodness, I had all these text messages and this message on what’s happened. I didn’t respond to it straight away.

And then I realized if. No, I actually had some quiet time during the day to get a few things done because I wasn’t doing that, and it’s very, so those little things, like you say, knowing that you get a sugar rush and you shouldn’t have the sugar during the week, so you wait till the weekend like.

There’s two components to this. Really. There’s the recognizing it in the first place, or probably three, recognizing it, wanting to do something about it, and then doing something that is actually gonna meaningfully make those changes to improve those systems, because that third part is hard.

Yeah, of course.

And I it’s we have to almost. The ourselves from ourselves, we have to almost eliminate the profitability for not doing the thing. It’s in manufacture plants, they have called the cheeks or the fixtures to create, a duplicate inter interchangeable parts that you know at scale.

So they don’t have to cut up or cut or cast a new parts every single time. So that massively reduces the amount of areas where things could go wrong here. And it’s the same with herself. Like I had a woman recently and she was a devil. Her. Hopping on Instagram in bed at 11 o’clock at night, and she, they’ll scroll it through videos at two, three o’clock in the morning.

So instead of trying to motivate her or tell her to have more discipline around that, like we set, we just set up a system that would eliminate the possibility for that. So does set the phone, that would time her out basically, after 15 minutes she could do it. She could do it for 15 minutes. That’s her little reward at the end of the day.

Then she got timed out and then she can’t go back on it again till the next day. So again, it’s eliminating the possibility for it not happening, if there’s little friction points to it. It’s reducing those friction points to make it easier for it to happen. And it’s it’s, again, having a process that means either completely unlikely or to for not to happen or it’s, you’ve eliminated the possibility for that happening.

How easy is it for people to recognize. What it is that they need to be tweaking, if that’s the right terminology, to be able to improve their performance. How? How easy. It’s like I had the realization, but probably prompted by someone else. Yeah. With regards to the phone. How do you identify what other things, the phone is an obvious starting point ’cause it does, I’m sure it does impact a lot of people, but there are less obvious things and so how do you find that within people and help them recognize it, as that first step?

Yeah, that’s a great question that it really comes down to, measuring and managing you can’t manage what you can’t measure. So what we do is we literally look at everything that’s happening in their daily weeks, okay? I have an AI tool that I built to actually track what they do, where the time goes, where their energy goes, where their focus goes.

That actually is able to measure that. So we can actually see what is happening in their days? Where is their time going? What’s the ROI from the kind of things they’re working on? What are the kind of things that pulling ’em off track or distracting them or interrupting them, could, we can build out a full picture at the very start and when we use that picture in front of them and we sit down without me even there anything.

They can up with pinpoint and get that aha moment to say, actually, I didn’t even realize I was doing as much of that, or didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing enough of that. It’s really getting the data at the very start to the, okay, this is actually what’s happening in real terms. It’s not based on what I think it’s in or looking back at the weekend and kind of wonder, Jesus, what did I do?

Or where did I go off track? It’s in real time actually, man, measuring this stuff so that over a period of time we can build up a full picture. And then when we have that level of data then it’s clear then this is, these are the systems we need to build around you and nobody in order to enable you to achieve the end outcome you’re after.

Yeah. Those systems are so important. Does that scare people? Being able to systemize it. How easy is it? There’s so many tools out there now in terms of automations and various things like that can help with systems. What is the right place to start when building it?

And what does systems in real terms look like?

Like I person come to me recently and she was like, I’ve, I have this, I’m going to do the AI tour, and I was going to train me how to do all the. I used the utilize these 30 AI tools, it’s gonna be great. You know what you think should I do it?

And I was like what’s the outcome you’re after? And she was like I’ll get to use all these 30 AI tools, but I know what’s the outcome you’re after ultimately when you use these tools? And she didn’t know. So it was like you start with the end of the mind and you reverse back from that point to say, actually what do I need?

Okay, do I need all these 30 AI tools or do I need just one or two tools? To make my life easier. Okay, do I need all these things or do I need just a couple of things? So it’s like, what’s the outcome you’re after? And reverse the engineer backing that. Okay. For example, if you want to, cook back on working hours and your are just, from an efficiency point of view, then it’s okay, that’s one of the, that’s the end point.

You’re working at this level baseline, okay, this is what you want to get down to. Then we reverse engineer back from that point. For example, somebody wants to increase turnover in their business by agile. Let’s say, 20%, okay, we start with the end of mind. We’re first engineer back from that.

What do we need to do? We have to bring in new client, 12 new clients. Okay. Step back again. What do we need to do? We probably need to bring in a one new client, say every month. Okay, back again. Step back. What do we need to do? We need to probably bring in about four new leads a week.

Okay. In order for you to bring in four new leads a week, what do you need to do that? I have to spend about two hours on market then. Okay. In order for you to spend two hours on marketing on what you need to do you know what’s the best thing to do here? That’s where the fifth clubs come in.

Then do we need a VA that we can delegate that will actually do our LinkedIn outreach or social media post? Do we need to carve out in your schedule a two hour block for you? Go through a certain criteria to actually, to bring in those four new leads so it all gets. Which starts with the end in mind, we reverse back from that, and then from that then it’s very, becomes a lot clearer what you need to build around you system wise, in order to enable you to achieve the pain.

Then at the end of the day.

Yeah, that’s a it’s a great advice, great piece of advice to start at where, what you want to achieve because you can get trapped in systems and building systems for systems sake. And then micro managing those systems. I know I even experienced it recently where I had someone who had tried to build a system for part of the business and.

There was actually I realized that after it was implemented going, there’s more effort in trying to. Fill in the steps of the system, then there is in actually doing it. And so the system got too, we just went too minute in detail. And so you ended up going I have to tick this, and this. And I thought I, no, I don’t like, just lump some things together and do that.

And I think that’s an important part of this in getting the system right as you say, it’s focused on the end outcome. So the best way to achieve that without necessarily always having to go into the minutia of detail.

Yeah,

it

is. It is a course and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Ful is better. Like the example I gave you with sweet and straw wasn’t this big complicated thing. It’s just they’re not in the house. Okay. I don’t have them in the house. That’s the rule. And then it’s much easier to get one division right, and have one rule that have, get a hundred decisions.

Simple. Simple is much better, comes off a hundred percent.

Let me put you on the spot a little bit. Give me a couple of, you, you pick the number. Give us a few tips for people who are looking to build systems for themselves in the business. What are some things that they need to how to identify what systems they should be putting in place and what they need to do?

Look at it’s the, again, going back to it, okay, what is it you want to, what is it you want to achieve? How would you like your days to run? How, ’cause I get people out there yeah, but this is the way it is right now. What about if, if I do, if this happens or that happens, or what about if I don’t hit this target and I don’t worry about the way it is right now?

Yep. I just lost you there for a minute. Yeah, I just lost you there for a minute with your internet picture is now saying it’s good. So do you mind just taking that back and answering that question again about just from the top about some of those tips. Yeah, a hundred percent. So a again,

it’s what, how would you like things to be?

How would you like things to run in your day? Like at a person that was talking to me recently and we were talking about this, her certain goals and targets and obvious saying, look it, they’re not specific enough. You don’t have figures, you don’t have dates, you don’t have any of that kinda stuff.

And if you just want to make more money, that’s. What does that mean? That could mean an extra five bucks in your pocket could mean an extra million at end of the year. What is it you actually want? And she would say, yeah, but what if I lose a client and I’m not hitting it and that you won’t motivate me?

I’m like, don’t worry about all the things that could go wrong. Think about the way you want it to be. Okay. Think what you want to achieve. Okay. And then it’s what do I need to do in order for me to get there? Okay I can see this is the ideal outcome. This is what’s happening right now on my days.

How do I get there faster? Okay, so I’m working on hours, I’m spending too long doing okay. We use the marketing example there. I’m spending three hours per week doing marketing and okay, it’s fine. Let’s, one system we could do is, one thing I do is. Is build playbook. So very simply, you have a loop video.

You take the lymph video from you doing the task, it’s not actually taking you extra time. And then you upload that loop video to chat GPT. You ask chat GPT to act. Yeah, as a, as an ai delegation expert. And you get chat gt to actually build you out on step by step playbook. Based on this video, based on success criteria, how success looks like economistic to avoid and a full step by step.

Then we take these playbooks, we hand them over to vas@maxfiver.com or Upwork, and then we can delegate the thing that you need to do in order for you to achieve the outcome. So you can spend even worth time per in something that has a bigger ROI for you to actually achieve the end outcome you’re after.

It’s all about getting people down into their zone of genius, because if they get the people down into that zone of genius things only they can do as leaders, as business people, then ultimately that they’re going to achieve those goals much faster. Okay, so what else could, like either another guy that kept using the business owner just left as an engineer company in Dublin and he had this big triage process for QA and documents.

Okay. So his team would have to QA the document to make sure there’s no, and everything is just right. And then it would come to him for a second triage. Why he would spend them like probably the guts of a day every week, just triage documents as a business, order, an admin type task. So what we’ve done is we’ve built out a custom cheap pt.

Okay? So we built a custom AI tool that will actually do the triaging for him. Okay. That enabled him to get the guts of a did per week back to get on the business. Now again, in his sort of genius progression towards the goals. So it’s like, what is it you want? How would you like things to run? Okay.

How would you like things to be? And then it’s what are the things we need to do in order for me to get there? Okay. And it’s thinking really outside the box as well. Okay. It’s if you had to. Okay take this task off your plate. How could you do it? Sometimes we think we have to do X and we have to do Y, but there’s often a much better way for it.

Another guy I was working with there later, he’s a four hour invoice process to do every single week, and I was like okay. That’s again, not value add for him, as in this is somebody else could do. Or what we done was we completely automated the task in about 15 minutes. So we’ve mapped out of current workflow, we’ve mapped out the future ideal workflow.

Usually ai, build a playbook, hand that over again to somebody on five.com or rock worker or one of these outsource websites. And then when in three days yet that process completely or when I say completely, was about 95% to the automated. So again, we’re getting him further down to that zone agen so he can spend his time on things only he needs to do as part of the best.

The challenge with all of that for small business particularly, is spending money. That’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s like it’s easy to say, great, we should have a VA that comes in and do X, Y, Z or we should have another person that does this. Yeah. And sometimes that money is easy and makes sense and I’ve often used this example and say, look, the first hire I had in business was a bookkeeper.

I loathe doing invoicing. I loathe doing the books. I take too long to do it and dreaded it every month when I was doing it. The best money I ever spend and, every month with my bookkeeper and shout out to Anna who I know listens regularly lifesaver. But the but it is a lot harder when you are, you’ve got someone who wants to begin regularly to do those things because it is about how do you equate.

Spending the money versus saving time versus being able to bring in more clients, do more work, so that you can pay those bills.

Yeah.

It has to

be ROI led. So again if it’s ROI led, it’s you go to a bank machine and yes, you have to put, a dollar into the bank machine.

But if your back machine is gonna give you back $2, $5 or $10 back, then you put that dollar in. I’ll do that, wouldn’t you? But unless you stay way in business, it has to be ROI led and when you can get down to the initial grad say, is this actually ROI led? Is there an ROI here? Then it, then it makes in to do the things.

So again, it’s not. A lot of people trouble mud against the wall and hope something sticks. It’s specific and pinpoint it. All of our oil lead, and by the way, hiring is not the first step. I always make AI express higher. Okay. Can we automate it? Can we delegate it? Can we can we divide that for that?

Again it’s one and done so you don’t have to hire somebody and now they’re doing the repeatable thing. That potentially could have been automation in the first place. Can we actually automate this process or. Must be reduced, the friction in the process. Okay. So we can streamline it. So we make AI our first hire.

Then we think, do we need somebody? And again, I wouldn’t typically recommend hiring somebody straight off the back. It’s okay, let’s bring somebody in. As and outsource this task to I’d say yeah, where it’s like maybe hourly, paid hourly or based on a block of time as opposed to now we, someone working full time on us with pressure on us to, to pay them.

Don’t know. Keep working in front though. What you can do is incrementally increase that. Then over time it’s like, what I always do is generate wins. Generate wins. You can see okay, the light bulbs go off and say, okay, if they can do this, Wallace, it’s could they do, that’s a thing with ai. Generate wins around all that so you can see the return on your investment of time.

’cause that gets people to buy in. And it’s if you could deal that, what else could be If we if our VA can do that now and it’s just working really well for us, what else could they do? And then the light bulb start goes off and then they don’t mind, but it’s r why lead? And it’s getting those quick wins at the start so that people really buy in to do the next thing or the next thing or the next thing.

There’s so many things that we could talk about here and there’s just not much time left, and I just wanted to get in a couple of things before we finish up. It’d be remiss me not to mention the book you participated as part of rise Above. Tell me a little bit about that and what people can expect from it.

And of course, preface it by saying we will make sure we include some details in the show notes so people will be able to access it. Tell us a little bit about Rise Above.

Yeah,

it’s,

so look I was lucky enough to, to quarter with Les Brown, myself and Nine Underwriters. We all have own individual chapter in the book and it’s really a series of inspiring stories of people’s journeys.

The, like myself had faced, really challenging and difficult situations. And how we overcame it in order to achieve the kind of things that we went on to do in our lives and our journey almost to, to this point. So it’s really, I often describe it, it’s a bit like, it’s basically the concept of if you ever read him stick for the Soul.

It’s basically not concept where our whole goal was just to inspire people that maybe come through a tough time, a difficult time, and knowing that, look at there is a light movement forward. And the times where I felt like, look, this isn’t working out. I didn’t know where to turn or where to go because I couldn’t find answers and solutions, but.

I I always seen then and liked that if you just stay consistent long enough, you’ll get there. And that’s was my message in the book. I know the other quarters were the same. If you just stay consistent long enough you’ll get there. Okay? Yeah. Les Brown has done great catch first, have done it.

He is the first chapter in the book and he says, look if you can look up, you can get up. And it seems difficult, but you can’t get up and you can move path, whatever those challenges are now. And when you do that, you just keep taking the steps forward. No matter how small those get, you’re going to get there.

You’re going get whatever it is that you want to achieve. There’ll be humps and there’ll be bump and be ups and downs. And especially in business, there’s that’s prior to the course, but if you stay consistent, whatever it is you want, you will get there. That’s really what the book is about.

Fantastic. Said we will make details of it available in the show notes so people can get a hold of that. And just before we wrap up, the question I always like to ask my guests is, what’s the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

Yeah, I think it’s, yeah, I got it. We can normalize the way things are right now and we can think that this is almost just the way it is like this. It’s like I often think, the weather in Ireland, like when it’s day after day after rain, we almost feel like, geez, there’s never gonna be a sunny day.

And then when the good weather come, then it’s day after. So you feel this is going to go on forever and it can be the theme in our life and our business as well. But the big thing is to get people at quick wins at a nearly stage that they can say actually. It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to put in 80 hours a week.

I don’t have to, I don’t have to feel stressed all the time during my days is to get people a quick win so they can almost say actually, there, there is a better way. For example, there was one woman who worked out recently and just one very simple thing. We bookended our day.

We either like a little 15 minute shutdown routine at the end of our day where it was like, this is your finished time. This is the time you, ’cause in business, obviously we’re not on a nine to five. It’s like you can work all the hours, you can work none of the hours. That one thing pulled her easement and her weekends back for her because work expects to fill the time available.

Okay? And when she seen that, it was like light bulb moment. Okay, what else can I do? Then she was all in. Okay. So it’s like, what is the one thing you can do that can make the biggest difference? Getting people, that one went straight away. They can say, actually, you know what, there is a better way.

And it doesn’t have to be like that because I can say it and you can hear other stage. But when you get those wins at an early stage, then that’s the moment where they’re all in.

Fantastic. I love so much of the information that you’ve given today. It’s such a not only a unique perspective in so many great stories, and I think there’s so much for people to learn from it. So I really thank you for being a part of the program and it’s lovely to speak to someone on the other side of the world.

Fantastic accent. We love it over here. Thank you so much for being part of the of the Biz Buys for Thought Leaders podcast. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And to everyone listen in. Don’t forget, of course, to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

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