Hey 👋 

Ben Slater here, in the essence of momentum and giving you something of incredible value at the beginning of our work here together in the Systems For Business Newsletter…

I’m going to be sharing one of my most impactful systems with you. If you just follow the simple steps - on average (as a subscriber) you’ll save over 10 hours per week in your schedule. That’s my promise to you 🙂 

We’ll also discuss how you may invest those hours for the highest utility. 

It will take a moment for me to build the philosophy, but just stick with me for 10 minutes because you’ll be in possession of a precious jewel that (because it’s based on universal business principles) will stay with you for the rest of your career. High long term return on time investment on this one.

Let me give you the context.

In 2018, I had a goal to scale my business beyond $100K/month - I’d been there once before - but it didn’t last long.

I was working on my mindset and sales. 
I was great at making products and generating leads… 

The problem was: Every time I scaled beyond $50K/month I would just start burning out… I’d find myself rolling back down the hill.

When I’m faced with a ‘patterned crisis’ such as the one I’m describing…

I turn to books. I have a weird connection with books: they’ve helped me to solve every kind of problem you could imagine. I also have a weird intuition with books, but when I’m faced with a problem they just find me.

It could be a suggestion, a chance encounter, or an urge to pick up a book already in my library… It’s almost as if when I clearly define my problem and set a strong intention to solve it, they start hunting me.

Weird, I know.

Einstein once said, ‘You can’t solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created it,’ something in me knew that I couldn’t keep doing the same things I’d been doing, or I’d just keep producing the same results.

A different kind of book started calling out to me.

I started reading books not just from people who had build 7 figure businesses but I went higher on the spectrum to those who has created multi 7 figure, even 8, 9 and 10 figure businesses.

I quickly noticed I was missing a big part of the picture. Things that kept coming up were ‘purpose,’ ‘zone of genius,’ ‘operations,’ and ‘effective delegation.’

After a few months of reading, listening and getting my head around it. I created an exercise as a synthesis of the lessons I discovered.

The first time I ran myself through it and I was fairly shocked with the results.

I learnt that;

- I was spending 80% of my time doing tasks that I didn’t love
- I was spending 80% of my time engaged in net negative energy tasks
- I was spending 80% of my time doing technical tasks

An entrepreneurial disaster.

It was a kick in the teeth to remind me that I’d created a prison of employment for myself with my business. This really pissed me off. I was livid that I’d allowed myself to be handcuffed to my desk like this.

So I used it.

Like moving dirt, I picked up the shovel and within 30 days, I had moved over 25 hours per week of filthy low priority tasks off my schedule. I took those hours and invested them to build a new product.

That product did $200K of sales month one - Since that moment I’ve been able to turn my long held goal into the new norm.

Now your breakthrough may not be as significant as mine… However after doing this exercise hundreds of times with clients I can say it transforms businesses and produces serious momentum.

Stick with it.

The Golden Section

I call this exercise ‘The Golden Section’ - I’m interested in the finding the ‘order in the chaos’ of life. Beyond business, making money, getting clients, travelling, being healthy or any other pursuit - this is what truly interests me.

One of the more interesting things I’ve discovered along that path is ‘The Golden Mean’ or ‘The Golden Section’ (same thing.) It’s a unique mathematic property observed in natural systems: both in large macro systems and sub atomic micro systems.

The Golden Mean is evidence that there is an underlying order in the universe. Perhaps it’s not entropy that rules, could there be a synergy there also pulling together, self-organising and harmonising.

Anyways, that’s why I called this exercise, ‘The Golden Section’ because it’s a nod to the philosophers throughout history who have dedicated their lives to understand it.

In future, I’d be happy to dedicate a whole issue to this concept… But basically for now, I hope this exercise pierces into the heart of essence of real growth… (which is what I think the Golden Mean may be.)

I get it, it’s easy to float up into the clouds and share theories and ideas about ‘the universe’ - whatever that means - I don’t want you to think this is a newsletter lacking substance…

I think there’s real value in philosophy, but only if you can make it practical and pragmatic.

Whether your business is moving forwards or backwards is down to one thing and one thing only.

The tasks you and your team habitually engage in.

If you’ve been tuning into the first three editions of the newsletter you’ll know I’ve been talking about Systems and ‘The 6 Pillars… Well… There is something even more fundamental than that.

The actions or tasks you perform in your business.

The 6 pillars gives you more insight into where and what you should be building in the future… This exercise focusses on what is happening now - it pops out some data that is very useful.

Below I’ve attached the accompanying Masterfile so you can follow along and input your data. **** This is the Masterfile on google - I’ve given you view access only - to be able to edit it Click > File > Make a copy.

Here are the steps…

PHASE 1 - ALIGN TO THE TRUTH.

Phase 1 of this exercise is the most important. As business owners, we often have so much on our plate that we forget that we actually own the business.

The goal of Phase 1 is to fix that by aligning to the truth of what is truly going on in the business.

Here are the steps…

1. Grab every task you’re currently performing in the business.

2. Tally up the hours per week you currently perform the task.

3. Run the task through a series of 4 models that define the energy you feel, how good you are at it, the tier of the task and also the business function. (I’ll cover all this in a moment)

4. - ALIGN TO THE TRUTH - calculate your numbers.

5. Create a New Hierarchy of tasks for you and your business.

Here is what it looks like when you complete these steps.

Column A. Getting Down the Specific Tasks.

The first thing to do is to write out the specific tasks you perform in the business. Here it’s useful to be as specific as possible. As you’ll soon see, a slight shift in the task can create a completely different profile or area of the business you are investing your energy - best to be specific.

Column B. Time in Hours / Week

Next you tally up the time in hours per week that you perform the task.

Don’t waste too much time trying to get things ‘exact.’ I’ve found that a well thought guess functions well. Once you’ve got them all down tally up the total, and then re-check the answers against that total.

Column C. Model 1 - Energy of the Task

In my opinion this is the most important model - and it’s for this reason I pay a special attention to it. With my clients, this is the first one I look at.

Here is why… I’ve now run this exercise with hundreds of business owners and I’ve commonly observed an 80/20 split. 80% of their time spent doing tasks that don’t bring energy to them.

In my opinion - this is the reason that many business owners hit burnout. More data on this shortly.

Column D. Model 2 -Proficiency - Telos

In Ancient Greece there was study called ‘Teleology’ - The study of meaning and purpose. They believed that every person had a chief aim, something they were uniquely prepared for based on their nature and the experiences of their lives.

They called it the Telos.

This Telos that I speak of has also been called other things in modern times. Dan Sullivan calls it ‘Unique Ability’ and ‘Zone of Genius’ has been referenced extensively in business books.

1. Telos / Unique Ability / Zone of Genius.
   
   This has two main qualities. If you line up 1,000 random people you’re on the podium. You are very good at this task/activity. And this is the key one - You love doing it!
   
   EG for me; Creating models and writing books.
   

2. Excellent
   
   You’re very good at it. Line up 1,000 people - you’re top 25 - but you don’t necessarily love the task.
   
   EG for me; Running ads. Sales calls.
   

3. Competent
   
   You’re average at the task. Within 2 standard deviations of the mean.
   

   

   
   EG for me; Social Media.
   

4. Despise.
   
   You despise the task - you procrastinate on this. Simple one.
   
   EG for me; Customer Service.

Column E. Model 3 - The 4 Tiers of Business Task

There are 4 Tiers of business tasks. Growth, Manager, Technician and Admin. These tasks are arranged here in a spectrum or hierarchy. As you move up the tasks become less urgent and less frequent. As you move lower in the tasks become more urgent and more frequent - the hamster wheel spins.

I can’t overstate the importance of this: Your role as the founder of the business is to spend as much time as possible on ‘non urgent,’ important tasks. These are the kind of tasks that no one is ‘asking you’ to do.

Move higher. No one forces you to market your business, create that vision, write that book or to create that product.

1. Growth Tasks - Creative tasks, usually done once, that tend to last for a long time. An example is creating a product once that you can sell countless times. These tasks unlock leverage in the business. If you show me your calendar, I’ll be able to tell you if you are going to scale your business due to the presence or lack of these projects.
   
   If you line up 1,000 people and ask them to do a growth task, there will be less than 50 people who can do it. Those people are the entrepreneurs of society. To be an entrepreneur is simply the way you approach projects.
   
   Breakthrough Question - How much of your day do you spend building things that continue to work or you?
   
   Examples of Growth Tasks - Marketing, creating new products, strategic planning, anything vision, personal development, creating evergreen content or systems.
   

2. Managerial Tasks - These are tasks where you are managing the internal team members inside your business.

   
   If you line up 1,000 people and ask them to do a managerial task, there will be less than 100 people who can do it well. Not everyone can be a great leader.
   
   Examples of Manager Tasks - Running team meetings, mentoring or training staff members, helping staff members to solve problems, reviewing work, delegating tasks, team building, general management.
   

3. Technical Tasks - Unfortunately this is where the bulk of small business owners spend their time - this is one of the reasons I’m sharing this model with you. I want to encourage you to kill the technician inside of you so you can rise up to growth. Both you and I will make a lot more money, have a lot more freedom and impact if we can successfully achieve this.
   
   Technical tasks have a big spectrum. There are incredibly technical tasks like coding or there are low technical tasks like managing client deliverables.
   
   Examples of Technical Tasks - Making sales calls, sending emails, client deliverables, coding, client calls, logistics and delivery, accounting, building websites etc.
   

4. Admin Tasks - If you line up 1,000 people and ask them to do a admin task, 800 of them will be able to do it well. These are tasks that require no refined skill. With just a basic training (usually less than 1 hour) almost anyone can do the task.
   
   Examples of Admin Tasks - Customer service, shipping and delivery of goods, paying bills, running the numbers.

Column F. Model 4 - Functions of the Business

One of the influences for this system are the books of Gino Wickman. They are amazing resources for entrepreneurship and I had some massive breakthroughs whilst reading them.

One of the bigger ones was learning the difference between a visionary and an integrator. Most big businesses you’ve heard of had not one but two major people behind the scenes. 

A visionary, who is usually the founder of the business and an integrator who acts as the CEO and manages the day to day.

These two people are like the yang and yin of the business. The visionary brings the ideas down from the clouds and the integrator brings the team and systems together to make sure it happens.

One of the challenges of running a business is that in the beginning you’ll be forced to do both. Some rare people are very good at this - however most small business owners will have more visionary energy that can be weighed down by too much ‘busy work.’

** Read Rocketfuel by Gino Wickman to understand this concept and start working towards a solution.

The functions of the business are: The area in which you’re taking action.

1. Visionary - Creative Head of the Business.

2. Integrator - Systems / Glue.

3. Marketing - Producing Customers / Clients.

4. Sales - Closing Customers / Clients

5. Operations - Everything After the Sale.

6. Finance / Admin - The Basic Money and the Admin.

There is a hierarchy here: As you go up the tasks become more important and harder to do. This is why you should always delegate/outsource down in your business.

Let me explain… Let’s say your business isn’t great at marketing - A common mistake is to hire an agency, reason being you haven’t mastered it, but you need it. If you outsource now, you’re outsourcing up into an area you don’t know.

Imagine if you’re a parent / or a teacher who is completely chaotic with no idea what’s going on. The kids will smell blood in the water. Best to keep the house clean before telling the kids to clean their room. (I don’t even have kids - I’m just using the example)

Anytime you’re outsourcing up your business will lose power: It’s a disempowered move. If you want to truly master business don’t spend thousands of dollars a month trying to delegate things you haven’t mastered. There is no shortcut for mastery. Instead invest the time, money and energy to understand it - so you can eventually lead it.

This is why I believe getting a mentor who understands the function well is a much wiser choice with a higher ROI.

Anyways back to the functions…. A small tip: as the business owner, long term you can be in charge of two departments - but ideally just one.

The Legend: Categorising the Tasks in Your Business

Now that we’ve aligned to the truth - we can get things ready for the next stage - Phase 2 - the decision stage.

In prep for this I tag each task with a colour, once you’ve done that I then arrange the sheet in order from highest priority task to lowest priority task.

If you’ve already found your ‘Golden Section’ task - I’d go ahead and tag that those with Gold and pull them to the top of your sheet.

The Traffic Light System

Tag your Golden Section Sheet with the Traffic Light System.

Red: RED FLAGS.

Here you will want to stop everything you’re doing and fix the scenario immediately. For me personally I use first use Red on anything that takes energy. Despise and admin is an immediate red flag for me too. From there I use discretion to ‘find my line’ of tolerance for what becomes a red.

It’s best to be aggressive here.

Orange: PAUSE AND REFLECT.

Orange is for things you know are a problem - but they don’t require an immediate solution. You pause and reflect. An example of this is an area of the business that you know you shouldn’t be working in such as ‘operations’ or ‘sales.’ Or if you’re doing far too much of a certain task - just highlight it orange - if for any reason the task doesn’t excite you it’s orange.

Green: SCALE.

Fairly simple here - These are the tasks that are scoring well for you. They give you energy, are telos or excellent, are growth, they are visionary, integrator or in your chosen business function.

These are the tasks you should do more of - You want to scale them up.

The Task Hierarchy

Once you’ve tagged each of the tasks with the traffic light system. I then arrange the page top down from the tasks that scored the highest across the board in the 4 models, to the lowest.

Your golds will be up top, then your greens, then your oranges, then your reds.

The Numbers

Once you’ve filled in the Golden Section sheet from columns A to F. You will be able to populate your data. In the black cell you tally up your total hours, and from there you can create percentages for each of the models we’ve covered.

Here are three examples from clients of mine I’ve run through this process, and some basic insight into the solutions we are working on.

The big issue here being zero time in the telos. Look you can run a business this way but I wouldn’t expect the business to be much beyond the average. Second to this there are two 80/20 splits for the energy and also the 4 tiers. Again this will just lead to mediocrity.

The solution here is to inject the business with more purpose - we’re building a long term vision for the business. When you’re in the weeds of the business manually turning the gears it can be hard to sense the impact of purpose, which is something metaphysical. It’s cliche but true - start with why.

He is also delegating 10 hours of operations work that we are investing to build a new marketing system for an already existing product: This product is more leveraged, and has a much higher profile across the board.

Interesting energy profile here - No neutrals and far too many hours draining the energy each week. This business is incredibly operations heavy. Currently this person is spending 57 hours a week in the operations of the business. 

It’s simply hard to scale things when there is so little energy from the owner going into marketing and sales.

The solution here is to make radical changes and quickly - It’s a non negotiable for me to engage in things I despise. 24 hours to be wiped off the plate there. Invested into marketing, visionary and integrator.

The big problem here is that there is the 14.5 hours per week of admin. If you lower yourself to the level of admin - don’t expect to scale your business. Also if you look at the time in the functions of the business 80% of the time is invested into sales, operations and finance. These are all hamster wheel activities that need to be done over and over… A job - but not a business.

The solution is to bring flip it in reverse. 80% of time into Visionary, Integrator and Marketing - they are higher level functions. 20% to the rest. You’ll build more in 1 year than your ‘competitors’ do in 10.

Something to note here is that you have to fly in the face of ‘what’s normal in your industry,’ to achieve these transformations I’m talking about. Don’t expect your employees to understand this also - if you’re lowering yourself to the level of other peoples expectations - you’ll struggle to scale.

I show you these examples to illustrate that business growth is rooted in personal development. All of the problems here and the solutions have one thing in common…

Sacrificing the lower to the higher:

What is personal development if not transcending the baggage that keeps us limited?

WHAT’S THE GOLDEN MEAN OF BUSINESS?

If there is a Golden Mean of your business - The path of least resistance, the perfect growth spiral spreading outward…

It’s the tasks that;

1. Give You Energy
2. Are Also Telos
3. Are Also in Growth
4. Are Also Visionary

^ If you build your days, weeks and months around these tasks, you will scale.

Column G. PHASE 2 - THE XSS SYSTEM - DECIDE

Moving on…

This is where you decide what to do with the tasks. Again this is easy if you’ve done the work above.

There are only three things you can do with a task…

X = Cut
S = Systemise
Sc = Scale

There will be some rare tasks that you can simply cut out of your life. A few years ago I was receiving huge levels of facebook messages from people asking me for admin things. I despised this - So I deleted my facebook and set up a separate line of access that bypassed me.

This was such a great feeling, I simply cut out that level of access to me so I could focus, fully undistracted on doing what I love to do.

Now for most tasks you won’t simply be able to cut them out. You’ll want to hand them over to someone else.

The key here is to systemise them. Building a system for a task is one of the more basic things you can do. I just open a google doc, hit record on loom, I then do the task and build a checklist as I go. The checklist is created with a video walkthrough.

This system is then attached to my Golden Section sheet in column i.

For the tasks you are keeping for yourself - you simply scale them up!

Column J. PHASE 3 - THE AOD SYSTEM - ACT

When it comes to getting things off your plate.

There are only three actions you can take.

A = Automate
O = Outsource
D = Delegate

AUTOMATION: In some cases you’ll be able to automate the task, and with the rise of AI - this is set to continue at a rapid pace. An example of something you could probably automate is client onboarding. Instead of doing it manually - you could do it via a long form newsletter for example.

Some great tools here are Zapier which will connect any apps you use together, having a CRM that houses your data, automating a finance dashboard that streamlines your decision making. There are countless ways to automate things. This is one of the most under-utilised tools for business owners.

OUTSOURCING: Outsourcing is when you hire someone externally from the business to perform the task for you. An example of this would be outsourcing your accounting, or hiring a marketing agency.

As a small business you can use sites such as www.upwork.com to outsource every sort of task you could imagine.

DELEGATION: Delegation is when you bring someone onto your team internally to perform tasks for you. As a small business owner I’m a big advocate of bringing on contractors over full time staff members - With contractors you have more flexibility, and you don’t have to get into tax and payg withholding.

Some of the most important advice I have ever received from a mentor here is this… Delegate the outcome not the task. Instead of delegating your social media posts. Delegate the outcome of producing 10 inbound prospects per month from your social media posts.

I re-do the golden section at the start of each quarter. Tasks will creep back in after just a few weeks - if you’re not ruthless with this, you’ll find yourself rolling back down the hill.

The Golden Section for Teams

The Golden Section works for all people inside the business, it’s not just an exercise for business owners. In fact, it’s incredibly useful to figure out what people in your business love to do, and what they don’t like to do.

If you shift the tasks around to give your staff more of what they love - they’ll love working for the business and you’ll see another big shift in momentum.

First run the golden section for yourself - make the changes and lead from the front. Then give permission for your team to do the same.

This edition of the newsletter is sponsored by ‘The Systems For Business Implementation Program’

Inside Systems for Business we have hundreds of models all designed to help our clients to scale. On average the clients we work with add over $200,000 to their businesses within the first year of working with us. The best will go on to add millions of dollars to their businesses.

The Implementation Program is a one to one mentoring program where we find the gaps in your 6 pillars and we work together to build systems to scale things up.

We help you to drive more leads, improve your sales conversions and leverage your product offering so you can add an extra $10-$50K/month to your business quickly.

We currently have 3 more spaces open for our November intake, if you want to learn more click the button below to tell me about your business and if I feel you’re a good fit, we can connect for a quick chat.

Talk soon,

Ben Slater.

Ps… If you appreciate the newsletter, I have a small ask… Can you share it with others? It saves me a lot of money on ads and it helps to spread ‘the systems way.’ 🙂