In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, host Brad McKay is joined by author and business owner Sam Carpenter to talk about the benefits of a systems mindset in business and life. In this episode, Brad and Sam talk about how a system mindset can change the way you run your business and your life.
00:07:38.980So the truth is, everything could be a lot closer to perfect and a lot less chance of going over the brink of destruction if he just stopped drinking.
00:07:50.440It's a very simple thing, and that's just one illustration.
00:07:54.600And within a business, it could be, hey, you've got your brother-in-law working in your business, and it's not working out.
00:08:10.560And it's the same with fixing the human body or the car or whatever.
00:08:14.340I was coming over the pass yesterday, Brett, over here to Portland where I am from very dry Bend, Oregon, and I had had the garage change the oil in my car and put new wipers on my car.
00:08:26.640And as I came over the pass, the wipers were going clank, clank, clank, clank, and I was just cursing, you know, they put the wrong wipers on, I thought.
00:08:37.720I was trying to listen to the radio, book on tape.
00:08:42.360It was just ruining my whole experience.
00:08:44.500I pulled over, got out of the car, and one of the blades hadn't been put on properly, and I just had to pull it up and snap it into place, and everything was perfect.
00:08:54.260But that's a good illustration from yesterday, literally.
00:08:57.520That happened yesterday coming over in the rain, that your whole life can be really, really messed up if one of those separate systems is dysfunctional, just one.
00:09:06.880And so there isn't that much to fix, but you've got to be able to isolate it.
00:09:12.040You can't, you can't, if you're having trouble in your business, you can get a book on the top 10 things that a successful business person does, but more often than not, it evades the problem, which might be this or it might be that.
00:09:26.160And so if you can see the world as a collection of separate processes, then you can easily isolate the problem process, and because you've isolated it, it usually is a very simple process, and it's easy to fix.
00:09:39.300And then you fix it, reinsert it into the thing, into your business, and then you go on to the next dysfunctional system.
00:09:46.180And that's what I did 16 years ago to repair my business, to take it from a, you know, I was working 100 hours a week.
00:09:53.400I worked 80 to 100 hours a week, Brett, for 15 years.
00:09:57.820I didn't make any money, single parent of two kids.
00:10:00.840And overnight, I got this idea, and I won't go into it here, but I got this idea that maybe I wasn't seeing life correctly, and that it is a collection of separate systems.
00:10:11.840Everything changed from that moment on, and that's what my book is about, both my books.
00:10:19.000So, I mean, getting metaphysical here, so there are systems going on in your life or your business, even if you are not aware of it, right?
00:10:26.820Like, you might have created systems without even being aware that you've created a system, correct?
00:11:16.540If there's a kink in a system, the beautiful part about life on Earth is that there's this thing called mechanical reality and the laws of physics.
00:11:27.240If the system is not going to create the result you want, then you need to go in and there's some element of that system that you need to tweak.
00:11:37.880Or if your life isn't going the way you want it to go, there may be some whole system you need to eliminate altogether.
00:12:19.040And looking and seeing that and being able to, once you have that view, you can start adjusting things to make things more productive or efficient.
00:13:59.320So in thinking back to business, right?
00:14:01.880I mean, I guess there's all sorts of systems going on in a business, whether how someone manages customer support, whether how someone, how a company manages communications, et cetera.
00:14:11.960And I guess a lot of people don't even think of it as a system.
00:15:28.660So what my people do is they work on the processes that need to be improved, tweaked, get caught up with modern technology maybe in the software area.
00:17:13.620You know, your first book was very geared towards businesses and, like, how to get the brass tacks of systemizing a business.
00:17:18.640But the higher-level principles of approaching your entire life with a systems mindset can help a lot with your personal development, right?
00:17:27.060Because I think a lot of people approach personal developments like, okay, they just approach, like you said, they just go, okay, today I'm going to eat well today.
00:17:34.280And they sort of like, okay, I'm going to eat some broccoli.
00:17:37.880But you're saying with a systems approach, you'd actually develop a system that would allow you to eat well, and you wouldn't have to think about it too much.
00:20:36.480And then you go to work working on the processes.
00:20:38.900And of course, in business, that means documentation.
00:20:41.000The big difference between a large successful business – the only difference between a large successful business and a small struggling one, I'll guarantee it 100 percent of the time, is that the large business is documented.
00:20:54.080Everybody knows what's going on within the business.
00:20:56.760In the small business, it's fire killing all day long.
00:21:07.240So yeah, in the first book, you talk a lot about the importance of documentation.
00:21:10.760So besides increasing efficiencies, I guess the thing that you get out of documenting is that, one, if someone leaves, right, someone can come off the street, look at the documentation, and do the job, right?
00:21:21.560But I guess the other benefit of documenting things, you can actually look at your process that you do in a business concretely and actually ask yourself, is there a better way to do this, right?
00:21:33.000Or do we even need to do this – do we even need to do this thing that we're doing that we think we need to do?
00:23:03.400People who are on the front lines, the sales people, the production people, always – you always want to have them contributing to the process, contributing to the working procedure.
00:23:14.840And then the beautiful part about that is it's the best possible working procedure or SOP, right, that you could possibly put together.
00:23:23.300But that person, if they've made a difference in a process, has bought into the working procedures methodology 100% because they had a piece of it.
00:27:16.800I think a lot of people – I guess another sticking point would be like, Sam, this sounds great, but we've got a lot of fires put out right now.
00:27:23.920And for me to stop and take time and systemize, we can't do it.
00:27:28.840So, I mean, is it possible to do this systemizing while putting out the fires that you have right now?
00:27:35.240So the owner's working 60 hours a week.
00:27:37.680Okay, owner, for a couple of weeks, you may have to work 80.
00:27:40.440You may have to work through the weekend.
00:27:42.220But I want to know what fires are recurring and what the biggest ones are and why they've got you so upset.
00:27:48.200And we're going to take the time to analyze that fire.
00:27:53.220And when that big fire is put out and it never happens again, and that's the whole idea, these recurring fires that come up, we have to sit down.
00:28:14.520I'm telling you, in the average small business in a month, people are rabid.
00:28:19.040They're foaming at the mouth about documentation.
00:28:21.340I know that's hard to believe, but the owner is.
00:28:24.700And the people that have been getting in trouble over and over again are because they're not getting in trouble anymore, and they're seeing their business run like a beautiful machine.
00:29:04.160Well, I've been out of town for three days, and I haven't had one communication with my – oh, I had – my COO sent me a message this morning and asked me a simple question.
00:30:00.700So, one of the other things you talk about, I guess a principle that's related to the system's mindset that helps the systems run efficiently, I guess.
00:30:08.200This idea of point-of-sale thinking, which I think is really – applying it, it's helped my business and my life out a lot.
00:30:13.980So, can you talk a little bit about what point-of-sale thinking is and how that can help improve your life or business?
00:30:19.020Yeah, you know, and you read my second book.
00:30:20.860That's a big aspect of my second book, the point-of-sale thing.
00:30:24.600And point-of-sale is from the cash register industry, the retail industry, and that means when you go to buy a blouse at Nordstrom's, a lot of things are taken care of, including inventory, bookkeeping, making change.
00:30:37.500Everything happens at a specific time, and you don't put anything off.
00:30:44.760Let me give you another illustration of that.
00:30:46.820So, I have this app on my smartphone called Say It and Mail It.
00:30:55.620But what I can do, if I have something – I had something for Andi, my COO, this morning, and I thought of it coming in here.
00:31:04.880And through my Bluetooth, as I was driving, I was able to record a voice message as I was thinking about the thing and send it off to her within 30 seconds.
00:31:16.380Now, the voicemail is an attachment to an email.
00:31:18.880Now, okay, so Say It, Mail It, I get on here – I've got my phone in my hands here – but I get on here, hit a few things.
00:31:35.900You want to take care of things right now, all day long, if you possibly can.
00:31:41.340And what this means is we rarely have a staff meeting because the other thing I'm able to do is I've got email addresses with everybody in my business, for instance, 40-some people at Centfortel.
00:31:53.440I can be driving along and thinking, God, things are going really well at the office, and I need to thank everybody for that.
00:32:56.000And then you have some input for somebody else or something else, and you have another idea.
00:33:00.820Brilliant thoughts go in our heads and out within seconds.
00:33:04.240So what if you could have a brilliant idea come up in your mind as this film strip goes through your head and isolate it and act on it, like, right now?
00:33:14.400So the other thing I do with this technology – and it's just voicemail attached to an email.
00:33:56.660So instead of – I mean, is there a point where you would, like – if there's a task that you just, like – when would you decide, okay, I can't do it now.
00:34:54.880And – but you really try to do things in the moment and you get real efficient because the stuff is going to keep coming at you all day long.
00:35:04.700And it's going to keep coming and coming.
00:35:06.800And you don't want to build even more stuff up with things you could have handled in this moment.
00:35:11.760You want to be ready for what's coming.
00:35:13.360You don't want to have a tidal wave wash over the top of you and make you want to put a bullet in your head.
00:35:19.220Well, Sam, you know, what's one thing – as we're winding down this conversation – if there's one thing someone who's listening to this podcast right now could do to start developing that systems mindset, what could that one thing they could start doing?
00:36:59.640The synopsis and the FAQs I'm particularly proud about.
00:37:03.160They explain the whole thing very, very well.
00:37:06.740And you can jump over to thesystemsmindset.com from the site.
00:37:11.460So it's best just to go to workthesystem.com.
00:37:14.040So if you have a business, you want workthesystem.com.
00:37:16.560If you don't have a business, if you have a job, you're retired, you're a kid in school, whatever, start with the systems mindset, managing the machinery of your life.
00:37:26.200It's slightly less than half as long as workthesystem.
00:37:29.680Workthesystem is definitely geared to businesses.