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Transcript

Building Smarter Systems: Brett Linnenkohl’s Blueprint for Scalable Success · The Accounting Leads Now Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success the go-to podcast for fractional CFOs and accounting firm owners who want to attract more high-paying clients and increase their revenue.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Hosted by James Donovan from Nine Two Media, this podcast dives into marketing strategies specifically designed for lead generation and client acquisition.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: In each episode, you'll hear from industry leaders sharing their success stories and Thank you to your bottom line.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Today we're joined by Brett Linenkoll, the driving force behind Evergreen Strategic Systems.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Brett is a fractional COO and integrator who's mastered the art of transforming big ideas into scalable, repeatable systems.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: With a background in psychology and leadership experience as a former D1 athlete, Brett brings a unique perspective to helping businesses run like clockwork.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to dive into his insights and hear how he creates lasting impacts for his clients.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Brett, welcome to the show.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, james, thanks for having me.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: When you sent me the invite, I was like, yeah, I was really excited, really excited to be on and I know you do amazing things for your clients, so excited to idea share.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I'm super pumped to have you on.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I think it was probably three years ago now when we first met.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I think it was in Chicago.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken, you were speaking at an event.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: We had a chance to connect and hear about what you're doing and how you help make businesses just run a lot smoother with their systems and processes.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: So I know a lot of our clients and everyone listening can benefit from that.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: There's always bottlenecks to be unsolving or bottlenecks to be solving for, so I would love to get into that how long have you been in this space and what gets you motivated about what you do?
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, loaded, big, loaded question.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: By the way, three years, has it really been that long?
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I think so.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know it's nuts and, as I told you, I had twins and a lot of kids.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Now, as I told you, I had twins and a lot of kids, now four total kids.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: So it's crazy how fast time flies.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: But that aside, man, yeah, so I've been in this.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, six years I've been doing this.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I ran a business in my 20s.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: So I was a baseball player, as you mentioned, started a baseball camp company, you know and what.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I started renting camp space and filling it up with kids and I'll just do that over and over.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Uh, and it turned into a nice little business, um, on the ground and, um, the cool thing about it after.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: So COVID hit and it totally destructed and I moved on.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Uh, but yeah, what was cool about it?
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: When I found out my skill was it wasn't necessarily the baseball, even though I was good at that I had the business pretty much systemized.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I was working like an hour a week.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: My team would come in, we'd talk over issues and they would go out, and what I mean by that is like one hour a week and stuff.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: I hated doing Like I really had to think everything else was stuff I liked, and you know that's kind of my position.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I think everyone who runs a business, you, should be doing the stuff that invigorates you and energizes you, because those are the things that create innovation, those are the.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Else, how can we just get it out of your head and and document it so you can, uh, have the team you pay actually do those things?
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Um, but that's that's really my favorite part.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: It's bottling up and extracting what's in the brilliant mind of these, these crazies like us who go out and try to start business and make value.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, I just love that.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: So hopefully that answers at least a piece of what we're chatting about.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: So every once in a while I'll speak to someone and they're like no, I'm good, I don't have any bottlenecks in my business.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: And you know I have a hard time not laughing at that, because every business, whether you're Amazon or you're starting, you know, as you're listening to this, you have a bottleneck.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: It's just a matter of what that bottleneck is.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: You were talking about figuring out what it is you love and then focusing on that, and then all the other pieces, getting a system in place.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: How should someone think about that?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: And even you know, take the time to start documenting what do I actually love doing and the other things.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: How can I get a system in place that is off of my plate?
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah Well, all right.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: So so starting somewhere.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Um, I think most entrepreneurs come to a place they're doing so many things, uh, themselves and it just starts to hit ahead when you're doing 60, 70 hour weeks and you still have things to do and you're hating your life and everyone kind of reaches that point.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: So you hire help, right, but then you start thinking they don't know what I know and they're not doing it right and you've got to train them.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: So you actually are taking on another job, another role that you have to train them and watch them and qualify them.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Then they leave and someone else has to come in, train them and watch them and qualify them.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Then they leave and someone else has to come in.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, it takes getting beat over the head a couple of times, I think, to get out of that cycle and start documenting.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: So the real yeah, the answer to your question is definitely documentation as the starting place.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Boy James, I mean, you're opening up a can of worms because there's so many types of documentation that you can use.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: There's different process layers within a business as you grow that you have to be aware of and how to document those.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: But the simplest way, if we're talking about individual who's like I, got too much crazy stuff going on.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let technology be your friend If you're doing something that you know you will have to do again.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Make a loom video, right, and say this is what to do, here are the steps to do it.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: And then you know yeah, I mean it's not super complicated, while some do make it complicated, but yeah, it's just record it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Record it, set it aside and let that be your training for life.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Record it, record it, set it aside and let that be your training for life.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, perfect.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: So really just keeping your, your SOPs and things up to date on on the information you have and just getting getting it out of your head is what I'm hearing.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Getting it out of your head on a sheet of paper somewhere for someone else to refer to it.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, definitely, that is the starting place.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: So, um, look, I think the initial place that we're kind of it's a if you are in pain, if you're in pain meaning you're doing things that you hate doing, that is the awareness that should be the trigger, like right now, if you realize, man, I'm doing stuff I hate doing and something else, like the things that liven you like I really want to play with AI.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: I really want to try to, you know, innovate something brand new or talk to new clients.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, you should drop everything.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: You should focus on the thing that you hate doing and say this will be the last time I will ever do it.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: And again, either write it down that is one way as an SOP, step one, step two, just like baking a cake, um.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Or the way I train my people to do it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: It's, it's just do a video, show me how to do it from the beginning to end.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: So, yes, definitely that, um, yeah.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So perfect?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: No, did you have another piece there?
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's uh, so how my mind works, man, and what's very difficult for me, it's like when someone's like, well, it's just an SOP.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, for individuals, where I find the most complexity and the problems that business owners have, once you have three plus employees, three up to 30, right, right, it starts to become this mesh of like, well, like, like, it just really starts to get disorganized, right, and so that's where I typically live with clients.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: It's in the science of process mapping the process mapping of how each individual SOP gets passed to another person, that gets passed to another person and how those flow to make up the bigger picture, which is the real magic that gets business owners free and makes it so you can sell and hand off and know your team is taking the step by step.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I mean I say a minor point, it's kind of a.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: It's always one of the things that triggers me to be like, yeah, and.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: But you know, yeah, yeah, that's fair.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: The minor point, but there's.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, yeah, that's fair the mind the minor point, but there's a huge.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a huge rabbit hole with it.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: The more you know, right, yeah, totally, yep, yep.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So for for those listening, in the fractional CFO role, as as you come in as a fractional COO, that that's not an easy position to replace, right?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Most of the time, your clients are hiring you specifically for your expertise.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: So what advice do you have on essentially replacing yourself at that high, that high capacity position that you know your clients are looking for?
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: So in that regard, it's all about a framework, frankly, and it's about the universe, where you can zoom out and see the big picture.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: You see the world.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: You can zoom in and see the little atoms.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: It's just about going down each layer and separating those into different segments of transformation, right?
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: So if you're a CFO and you know you're hiring me and I need this result, well then you can go to the next level and say what are the stages, what's the framework, the five steps, and break those into their own Start here and here, start here and here, and then, from that, breaking those into minor boxes.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: It's something I call input-output chains.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: At that level, it's like what's the input?
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: What is the recipe to transform?
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: What's the output?
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: What's the recipe to transform?
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: What's the output?
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: What's the next step?
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: So that's really the way from the tasks, just by going through the process.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: So yeah, our, our audit process.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: That's basically how it works Segmenting, different transformation, and then what are all the steps to make it happen?
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so look, and you also have me ramped on caffeine this morning, you know, you know had had some coffee, so hopefully we're um getting some value here.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: But no, this is great.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: This is great.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So can you tell me about a time in your life or in your, your entrepreneurial career where this maybe wasn't all figured out and and once you did, like, how much of a shift that's made for you?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, you mentioned you just recently had twins.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Before we started recording, you've taken some time off work.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing all these systems and the process you've put in place allowed for you to have that much freedom so you could spend time with your new, your newborn twins, with your family, and things are still running in the back end, so maybe walking through what life was like before these things were put in place and now what it's like on the other side of the fence with all that hard work put in so you can reap the benefits of having the freedom.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, for this business.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Um, I kind of came in, you know, knowing what's like what loops would need to be closed and, um, building them as as I go.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you, at the time when I was running my business in baseball, yeah, I remember.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: So I was just pushing sales, you know, I would be throwing email lists and gathering up camps and yeah, there was a time I just remember I had done like back to back to back to back to back, 10 hour days working with kids on the field, uh, putting them in camps.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I just remember laying down at the end of the day and looking at the sky, feeling numb, uh, literally numb, and and just thinking like man, this is this, this, there's gotta be more than this, there's gotta be something I can do.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: But I didn't know what to do, uh, and there was really no way out.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: No one was going to replace me in filling these camps and working with the kids and talking to the parents and, you know, lining staff and yeah, it was just like it was keep going or, you know, totally cut it off.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: And that really wasn't an option either.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: And yeah, like, I think, the first book, like many entrepreneurs, you pick up e-myth and you say, okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: And so I started just reading books.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: One was, um, uh, sam Carpenter is an author that it's worked the system.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: That one was really influential.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Um, and there's also part of me that that, uh, especially without kids, I was.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: I just went like I would read into the night and execute, you know, and just drive.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: So, um, very, very highly motivated.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: And at that time it was my first foray into using virtual assistants.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: So research that I think four hour work week kind of pushed me.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, I knew about them but that was kind of, uh, adopted some systems from there.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and long and short, just kind of develop my own way to take tasks and hand off, yeah, so before it was that.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: And then, within three years of just handing off and delegating and fighting my way out, like afterwards, like I said, one hour a week is what I was down to of stuff I actually had to do.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Everything else was clockwork, yeah, so reactivity, things coming up and saying oh no, and what do we do?
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Anytime those things happened, I would analyze it.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I'd say where did this come from and how could we have prevented it in the first place, I would SOP a system and delegate somebody to it on my team and then we would put it on a calendar so that they would do the checks.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: That would have prevented that and over time, just building those up that's really what you know got me free and yeah, the feeling it's great, man, it's just.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: It allowed me to focus just more on higher leverage things and running more campaigns and yeah, all the fun stuff.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, that's cool, it's yeah, it's a very motivating um thing that you've achieved and just knowing like this is possible and getting to that point where so much is handed off and it's all documented, the there's not as much surprise that could happen.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Everything's predictable because you have the systems built out.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I mean that's not as much surprise that could happen.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Everything's predictable because you have the systems built out.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I mean that's what every business should be striving for right.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Totally, yeah, and that really gets to, you know, my passion, what I really, you know, really really care about, I got.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I like marketing in itself is very subjective.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of you know it's like fishing you can't guarantee always a fish.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: So you got to, you know, play different strategies and try different things to get people in Operations is mathematical.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: To me it's objective.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: You can define and make decisions and follow procedures based on if this, then that, and so yeah, with enough time and dialing those in, yeah, it really should be thought of as mathematical as numbers like a CFO deals with on a day-to-day basis.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, look, man, like, however deep you want to go, I can go because it's very close to my heart that mathematical modeling of operations, okay.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So, and this might get too deep into a rabbit hole, but is there any softwares you're using right now that you couldn't live without that you would recommend?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, to accounting and tax professionals, but really just any business owner who's looking to systemize their business and have things run smoother?
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, you know the top one that I use, that you know I highly recommend for any business owner.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Again, it's two operations.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so Lucid, lucidchart, are you familiar with that software?
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: And you could use Miro, you could use Whimsical there's a million out there.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: But in my experience most business owners they think it's too complicated to be mapping things right.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: But to me that is the matrix behind the business.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: It is the matrix behind the step-by-step processes.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Matrix behind the business.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: It is the matrix behind the step-by-step processes.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: So visually seeing things, visually mapping them out by making shapes, you're actually making math right.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: They're enclosed systems that you can fit things in and define things in and therefore, you know, create that structured flow.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: And I've seen a lot of teams they live in either you know a project management system or they live in an Excel sheet and they list stuff out, which is great.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: But again, to me that's skipping the work of really laying out the depth and the 3D you know dimensions of how something gets put in their system and flows through to transform into the outcome.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: So yeah, if I had to pick one, I really, really would highly recommend any business owner who's not afraid and is ready to get out, get one of those.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Lucid is my favorite.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff we can do.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: My process engineering team always loves that.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: But yeah, any of these.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: And the benefit of doing that is AI.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Right, the outset of AI when you get your business defined, you got a consultant for operations in the backend.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: You know that can tell you efficiencies and tell you but yeah, that's what I would recommend a hundred percent.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Okay cool, that's awesome.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, like anything right, saying it's one thing, but seeing the visual it it it really completes the picture and you know exactly what you're looking at.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: That's something that I'm I'm going to spend some time to do because, like we have ours, you know it's drawn out, it's in a word doc or an Excel sheet or in high level on a workflow, like you can see to a certain extent, but like the full picture of when, right from when the lead comes in up until the sale our clients are making and everything in between.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: To have that individual would be very beneficial.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Totally Well and like as you're saying it, I mean we're on zoom, I can share my screen right, like.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Let me show you an example.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: This is one of my current client.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Here I got to.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, here it is.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Um, quick, the most.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Most of the time we're not putting the video out for the podcast, but uh, I gotcha yeah no doubt.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, so all good, and maybe we'll have to do a follow-up for anyone interested.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: But there's, yeah, it's, uh yeah, with with no video, all good.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Um, um, the long and short of this.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: And to connect the ideas you said, no one has bottleneck.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Look, if you visually map out the flows of your process and you don't think you have bottleneck, I promise you you will find so many insights.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: You'll find gaps of one thing that just doesn't quite connect to the other, and you'll find ways to organize information, just like analyzing a spreadsheet, right Like in our swim lanes.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: We found that if we organize swim lanes and for those that don't know swim lanes, it's who is doing what, oh boy, it is tough without visuals, isn't it?
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: And this is a perfect point, a reason you should do it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: If't know swim lanes, it's who is doing what?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, it is tough without visuals, and this is a perfect point, a reason you should do it.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: If you Google swim lanes and look it up, if you organize those by labor, right by dollars per hour, and you put on the left the highest dollar per hour people, and then all the way down by moving, by trying to actively move tasks that people do to the right of the swim lane.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: You know you're saving dollars, uh, you know you're saying labor costs and that's, you know, on top of whatever efficiencies and processes you find.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, highly recommend the visual stuff.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Um and uh, yeah, for those listening that don't understand, there you go.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: That's why.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Well, and that's the thing, right.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Like it's what you're talking about, what I'm imagining in my head is there's probably for everyone listening.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Everyone has their own vision of what that looks like versus what you would share on your screen of.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Like this is what it is, this is how we can get you there.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: As you're sharing your screen, this is great, but people like the you need people like you need to get it mapped out like this and this is what your presentation was on, I believe, back in Chicago of just showing how things are mapped out and where the bottlenecks were solved, how it frees up that bottleneck.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Now there's another one to solve for, and usually that new one you're solving for is a much bigger payout Generally.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Once that you know and you just keep going and going, yeah, Eventually, yeah, you get to a point where you can proactively solve problems.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: That would have been a headache for you, uh, just by laying it out and saying, okay, that doesn't match.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: It's a fascinating science and, again, something that just, uh, my passion for it is the things I find in there.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: James, it's insane.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: When I lay out a business's process, yeah, it just always blows my mind how deep it goes.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I got a couple more questions for you.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: One how do you, for someone who's going to get into this or start or think, okay, I need to revisit this I'm sure it's really easy to get, you know, super granular at the problems what would you say to that individual?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Or, like you know, maybe just zoom out a little bit to think of this from a bigger picture, because I mean, I'm just thinking of it from the marketing perspective.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, we need more leads, while you can go down so many different avenues there of why you're not getting them.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: What channel should I be on?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Where should I be spending?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: You know our content, is it like?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: But if you zoom out and just think, okay, we need more leads, what are we going to spend to get that, and then start going down your paths, do you have any advice on that, or did I kind of answer my own question?
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: I think we need a visual for that and we can discuss yeah Well, maybe now that you talked it like, like you're saying, how do you use that to make decisions that affect?
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Or maybe repeat it one more time.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll probably come out a little bit different this time, but basically someone who's thinking about all right, I need to revisit this.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Let me think about where our bottlenecks are.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Start mapping this.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: It's very easy to get extremely granular with it and you may be even solving potential problems that don't really exist.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: So how far back should someone go to see the bigger picture of, okay, this is actually what we're looking to solve?
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: It's not that this copy on this ad because of something isn't working.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: It's like.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: No, there is a bigger problem here that needs to be solved.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: So one point you make on that is like, where do you start?
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: I guess that's one of the things like why would I do this and where to start.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: When we go into business, business is on fire and they know these are the symptoms, this is happening, they know the smoke, but they don't know how to dig down to the actual fire that's causing that smoke.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: And so you, as you said, if you're in marketing, what is it that's causing this issue of me not getting leads in?
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, this process.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: So if you know what you're trying to solve, then you identify that workflow.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And so for you it might be okay.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: We have these three ways that we generate leads.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: We're going to map out the whole step, step-by-step of each and by doing that right, the way we do it is, again, it's like what's the input?
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: One information comes in.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: What is the process right now that we do to get this output?
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: That then leads uh and matches that output to the next input.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of words, again, without a visual uh, but um, but yeah, it always like um.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: It always starts with just making that list of problems and then using that to explore Um.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: So that that's one point.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: The second point point what you're talking about is what I call the hidden process, dimensions, right, and I akin it to like a factory.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: In fact, that's a book I have coming out.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: It's called the Factory Formula and most business owners, especially those that live in their project management system or Excel sheets and just list that they're only living in one dimension and when you come up with problems and you try to solve them, they get lost because you're you're looking at one problem and, as Einstein said, right, the, you can't solve a problem at the same level, um and and so the visuals allow you to zoom in and out.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: So the factory formula.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I would.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I would give you this analogy Um, imagine your business is a factory, imagine at the very top.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: So the factory formula.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: I would give you this analogy Imagine your business is a factory.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Imagine at the very top of the factory there's a control room.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: You can walk down the stair In the control you can see all the assembly lines, right Bunch of assembly lines.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: You can walk down the stairs, stand on a perch and look over an individual assembly line.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's onboarding, maybe it's your marketing, maybe it's, you know, fulfillment, and then, if there's issues.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: You should be able to walk up to the individual stations and look at that station and assess is this where the thing's going out of whack, right?
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: So that ability to go all the way to the top, all the way down, that's kind of the system that we use and we've developed to be able to navigate it, but it is critical for anyone doing it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: It's like there are different process dimensions.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: The SOP is really just that station of the assembly line and how that affects the whole is the game right of fixing it.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: So yeah, man, you know, the the more I do these, the more I realize, like, shoot, we should, I should just, we should just be video podcasting all day, because I feel like I'm you try to explain, but, um, but, yeah, um, I mean, that's a great visual though.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: thinking about, thinking about standing above the assembly line, looking down and you know the the thing can't get to the next piece, it can't get to the next piece, it can't get to the next line unless it successfully gets through that first one.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: And looking down and seeing that I used to work at Molson years ago on on the assembly line.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: So that's my visual.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, you know, at the very top all of the recycled bottles are coming in and how it gets all the way back into a packaged box of beer at the very end, and where the breakdown.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: So that's an awesome visual.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I hope everyone listening can have their own visual assembly line and think about where their their gaps are.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: My last question for you, brett thank you so much for sharing that visual.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: It's super, super helpful.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: What?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: What's one actionable item someone can take today that they can start implementing to?
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: you know, better, better, systemize their business yeah, um, well, well, one action item to better systemize?
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Look, it's always hard for me, as an integrator, to answer that question, and the reason is it depends on your situation, and that is the honest truth.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: So, you know, I would retort and say you know, if you know your clients well and you've spoken with clients, what's a typical thing?
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: You've heard that they're like man, if only I think starting there, and if I fill in that gap, what if you have people problems?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: You know management problems.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Uh, you do have output problems or quality control problems.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: This isn't the way I wanted it.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Um, it's just a slew of things that really depend on, uh, you know what?
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: What is each individual dealing with?
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Um, but, yeah, like, uh, I'll start with this one.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: This is a real simple one that I always find helps, and it kind of goes back to, um, the my story of how I handed off individual things.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: So, so, for the individual struggling and running those 60, 70 hour weeks, um, this is this is what I would say.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Um, in my experience, there's really three types of tasks tasks defined as something that takes up your time.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: There's really only three types.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: There's what I would call non-skill, there's semi-skill and then there's skilled, right, and so it's a process of peeling off those bottom layers of things that you don't necessarily have to do to work to the higher layer stuff that only you can do.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: And while we're in the world of analogies, well, let's go over to a surgeon's office and you think of a surgeon's office, really simply.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Well, you got the secretary.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: She's doing very process, task oriented stuff Doesn't take the surgeon to come have her.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Ask a patient to sign the clipboard, you know, fill out paperwork.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: You have the semi skilled.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: The semi skilled in this case might be the nurse, right, or a physician, tech or whatever.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Now, those people.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: It does take some skill to go in the room and set up the surgery and set up the table and know what the surgeon wants.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: You can't have anyone doing that.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: However, that skill is pretty plentiful, right In the marketing world.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: It might be a website builder, right, somebody can build websites.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a threshold, you need someone pretty darn good, but you can find them.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: You can find them out there pretty easily.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: So there's non-skilled, semi-skilled and then the skilled.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: The best surgeon's office is a surgeon who can get up, come to the office, put on their gloves everything's taken care of and they perform the most important task, which is fixing the client right.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: If they can focus on that, they can go room to room and just fix clients and make those cuts and trust their team.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: And that's what I would say to anyone out there who this resonates with and who is struggling with time or fires or can't spend time with their family.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Just start by identifying in your day have a notebook, I mean, I still do this writing down stuff that is like that's a non non-skilled, that's a that's semi.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: I could find that, um.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: And then eventually, when you get to the place where you're like, how do I get myself totally out?
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Uh, for that you go hire another surgeon, right, and the good part is then you can make their life really easy, like really, uh, get get good quality, because all they got to do is come and do the cuts.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, that's so good.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on here, brett.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: We were probably a little bit longer than I originally quoted for you, but I really enjoyed this conversation.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: How, how can people get in touch with you if they want to continue this?
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: You know one-on-one or or have your team reach out and help them in whatever bottlenecks they're running into.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we're doing something really unique that we haven't done before.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: So our website evergreenstrategicsystemscom Right now, for a limited time, we just put up my new book, the Factory Formula Included with it.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: It's the formula, it's a course, it's also there's an AI bot that if you have chat GPT, you can just ask it questions that apply to you and some other little stuff.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: And you can go there, sign up and check out just my perception and everything I've learned on the hidden process dimensions and how to make it work for you, and then, if you want to talk, there's an opportunity we can schedule.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: I do clarity calls, no cost, no worries.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Just tell me your problems, the biggest issues, and I love listening and helping Um and and if I can help, uh, then the audit is is right up after that.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: So evergreen strategic systemscom.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: All right, I'll get that link in the show notes so people can get in touch.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: I highly recommend people reach out to you.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah again, thank you so much for coming on.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: This was amazing.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, james, thank you and um always, always a pleasure and appreciate you, man.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I hope you found value in today's conversation.
• 33:10
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• 33:12
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• 33:17
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• 33:20
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• 33:23
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• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Call it's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need.
• 33:37
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• 33:43
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• 33:48
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• 33:50
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• 34:06
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• 34:08
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• 34:10
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• 34:17
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