353 | How to Create Systems To Operate Your Business with Mike Michalowicz

Does getting your business to run like clockwork sound like a dream? To me the idea of the business running smoothly and clients being cared for is SEXY. Yes. I said sexy. If you can align your team and the systems in your business to run like clockwork you have something special. Today’s interview is with Mike Michalowicz, author of Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan, Profit First, and other books too. He is a fantastic speaker and just all around great guy. I am excited to share with you my interview on how to create systems to operate your business.

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Target Audience: Mike founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies. Confident that he had the formula to success, he became an angel investor…and proceeded to lose his entire fortune. He created the “Profit First Formula”, a way for businesses to ensure profitability from their very next deposit forward.

How to Create Systems To Operate Your Business: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Leaders in the trenches and your host today is Gene Hammett.

Gene Hammett: Hi, my name is Gene Hammett. I am the host of leaders in the trenches and my question for you is, does your business run like clockwork? I know that’s a kind of an interesting question, but as a business owner, you likely want everything you do to run like clockwork predictable. You want to have systems. You want to have people that are actually making all this happen and growing the business when you’re not around, but let’s face it, the reality was completely something different because when you are running a business, things are changing so fast that it is so hard to get ahead of all of the work that has to be done so that you can design those systems. Now I know this because I felt this in every business I’ve ever created and eventually sometimes it gets there, but for the most
part it’s a struggle.

Gene Hammett: So our guest today is someone that will help us with our business running like clockwork, and in fact, he is the author of the book clockwork. He’s the author, also the author of the Pumpkin plan and profit first and some other books that are just amazing to help you really run your business the way it should be. Run. Mike mcalary, what’s. I won’t try to spell it. We’ll put a link inside the page, but I want you to think about how your business is running. Could it improve? Could you as a leader, step back and take a four week vacation and the business continue to run through the normal cycles? The answer’s probably know the answer or the reality of vacations is usually you’re trying to work yourself to the bone before you actually can go on vacation and then you’re trying to squeeze in a little bit of extra time when that families often somewhere place else and you are really stressing yourself out while you’re on vacation.

Gene Hammett: Now, this interview will help you run your business like clockwork. And now here’s the interview with Mike mcalary. What’s have you ever felt like in your business, like you just couldn’t get it all done because you were actually the bottleneck in your business? Well, I want to ask our special guest today, Mike mcalary. What’s a. He wrote this book, clockwork. Why do we want our businesses to run like clockwork?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, Gene, so the answer to assemble, I think most of us are overworked, so if you’re working ridiculous hours, if the health, wealth, and success of our businesses fully on your shoulders, that’s a business that cameron like clockwork. It is fully contingent upon you. What clockwork teaches is how to very specifically extract yourself from the business while the business grows and the end goal is that you are now independent of your business so the business can run itself and that’s what you’re gonna learn when you re clockwork equity exit. I had a fortunate 500 exit, but I think the most important thing is I also lost all my money on the verge of bankruptcy, pure business idiocy, and started to write books.

Mike Michalowicz: Not because I ever thought I was gonna write a book. I started to write stuff for my own sanity, trying to figure out what, what did I have right, and I found that the problems that I’m having, we’re not exclusive to me that other entrepreneurs had them and that, that spawned a dream one day wanting to be an author. I didn’t know how or where. And in 2008 I said, this is it. I, I’m all in. And I became a full time author back in 2008 writing, you know, these books I have strategically positioned over my shoulder. Just happened to be there, you know,

Gene Hammett: they just happened to me there. My thanks for being here. When I think about your work, uh, you know, I do think about the Pumpkin plan first because I’ve had a number of people say that that’s the book that changed the way they run their business.

Mike Michalowicz: I love hearing that.

Gene Hammett: So, you know, is that the first book?

Mike Michalowicz: The first book is called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, right? And um, it was the little engine that could still is. It was just this, I call it my freshman year, it was an angry book. Uh, but, uh, hopefully in, in engaging and exciting book too. At the same time when I say angry, I retaliated against all these established beliefs that failed me. Like you need money to be successful. You need an education in your market, you need a content networks, you know, you need a minimum viable product. All these concepts are out there. I railed against them and the book went on to be a popular in this community. It’s, it’s, it’s a little bit of a kind of trend. And then a penguin and approached me, my publisher today is that we want your next book, which became the Pumpkin plan, which actually of the books I’ve written, that’s my favorite of my books.

Gene Hammett: Well, one of the things that’s unique about your books is, and maybe this is bad plan, but they actually have a habit forming concepts around them.

Mike Michalowicz: Hm. Yeah. That, that’s very much my plan. They’re all behaviorally based. So my little, you know, kind of auditing thing is uh, I love behavioral psychology. Been studying it for a lifetime. I have no certifications and I’m not trying to. But actually every book above me here minus like one or two are all my most recent behavioral reads. Um, and I, I read one seems like every month or so I’m into a new behavioral book. So I’m reading this book called Neuro Marketing, which is my backpack right now. Well, all that to be said is I found that once we can address our behavior around something, we can actually, uh, implement significant change. And the greatest way to do this actually is not by changing our behavior, but just being aware of it and then channeling our behavior.

Mike Michalowicz: So capture the energy, the way we behave around something, put systems that kind of chance, the results we want, and we’ll get the results. So many of my books are based beyond behavioral principles.

Gene Hammett: Well, the one that comes to mind the most, and I think it’s really easy, but it’s also not very common. Is the book right over your shoulder profit first?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. So, and I can’t tell you how many people like, um, that was my idea. And I’m like, well why do you write the book? Like I understood the ideas of profit first are not original. It’s not like I’m like, oh my God, I have the most amazing idea, but what I did is I studied over history over time when people wanted to have savings and income for themselves, what were the most effective ways to maximize income maximizer savings, and was pay yourself first principle.

Mike Michalowicz: So I’m like, okay, well we need apply some business, so I’m looking who’s written a book about and no one has. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to write a book about this now. I started doing profit first for myself 10 years ago. The most recent version came out a year and a half ago, so it’s still a relatively new book, but why does I found that it’s a blend of pay yourself first of the envelope system and other traditional system. I’m removing temptation. You know, we talked about chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t eat anything because there’s nothing here that’s a way of removing temptation. Don’t make it available. It took these behavioral principles, put it together, apply to business, and I think it will profit first really is a fresh perspective of established proven methodologies.

Gene Hammett: Well, I love it because you know, it’s just such a simple thing. Like we joked about this before we cut the recording on.

Gene Hammett: You didn’t need to write the book, right?

Mike Michalowicz: You just go down and I a stamp or something. I mean, the funny thing is I’m between me and you is like if you just read the title, like there’s, there’s the lesson, like if you read the title, you’ve actually consumed the books core concept. So, but I also argue in the book is not fluff. Then I talk about specific implementation strategies, how to do it at the bank, why you need multiple counts. I called the five foundationals, how you need to send them up. This concept of allocating money on a rhythm because our behavior responds to rhythm and systems and how to set that all up. So it’s content but. But I will tell you, if you want to get started with profit first, the most successful business owners and we now are, we’ve approached 100,000 businesses that we’re aware of now doing this system that if you want to be successful doing it, the first principle, which is the title profit first, just start with that.

Mike Michalowicz: Just take a percentage of your profit starting today. It could even be one percent. Hide it away from yourself. Do that every day, repeatedly. Every time money comes into your business and you’ll start seeing profit accumulate and then you can build into the rest of the system.

Gene Hammett: Uh, it’s such a simple thing. I wanted to go into your newest book and I want to have a lot of questions that I want to talk about, but I want to go to this one thing because I know as entrepreneurs, um, we put our lives on hold many times when we’re building the businesses. And, I know I’m not alone with this, but it didn’t really go on a good vacation for four or five years in this business because. And I put my hobbies to the side, I put everything to the side that

Mike Michalowicz: I needed to focus on the business.

Gene Hammett: Um, but it also didn’t really work for me. So I’m going to ask you this question. Um, you have this concept of a four week vacation, like, is that even possible for entrepreneurs?

Mike Michalowicz: Right. That’s the big kinda hairy, crazy commitment I’m asking people to make is a four week vacation. And yes, it’s possible. I actually just did a blog post. If you google for we vacation, Cindy, spelled c, y n d I, that’s one of the people that was a case study in the book. She’s returned from a four week vacation. We did a debrief. You’re in and wrote down everything she had done a and how it worked. I’ve done myself to. And actually my next one comes up December seventh. So from recording this about three, four months out, here’s what I found most entrepreneurs who take a vacation gene try a one week vacation and maybe you have.

Mike Michalowicz: I’ve done this, but we found our behaviors this as the vacation approaches, we go through a cram process like, oh, I’m leaving next week. Oh my God, I need to do more work. We work into the night. We try to do a bridging technique. If we can get enough work done in advance, maybe while I’m away for a week, I want to work. When I come back, I’ll cram to catch up, so we try to bridge over, which is not a business that’s independent. Now the owner is this. We’re playing a game with time, two week vacations, same basically thing. It’s this cram thing, but then we often go into this, what we call workcation modes, like why I’m going to allow myself to check in for an hour every day on email and that’s how I’m going to bridge this and sometimes we do that in the one week
vacations too.

Mike Michalowicz: That’s not a business that can run itself. What I found though is if an entrepreneur can extract themselves both physically and a digital disconnect for four consecutive weeks, that a business goes through every element that it experiences. Typically in four week cycles, invoicing, new client onboarding, maybe an employee problem or a new point hired. All the considerations happen usually in monthly cycles, so that’s why if you can disconnect yourself from four weeks, you have proven that you can remove yourself from your business permanently. Now, here’s how that for we vacation works. I’m not suggesting like tomorrow morning wake up and go on four week vacation that destroy your business. Why am suggesting is make a declaration in the future? I suggest a year and a half to two years out so we have an adequate runway, but commit to it. Tell your spouse how your kids, wherever commit to it so it can’t be revoked.

Mike Michalowicz: Then starting today, you’ll feel a mind shift. It’s like every time I do something I realized that that’s not a sustainable method. I have to find not how I can do it, but who can do it for me or what resources can I use and in the book I outline a month, a year and a half process to slowly get to that four week vacation. One last thing when you take it is going to be perfect and seamless. No, we’ll problems happen. Yes, will bear your business. No, I can’t imagine unless you’ve not prepared whatsoever, but those problems that arise, the beauty is that those are the things you need to fix for the next four week vacation you’re going to take. So the issues you need to address when you get back present themselves and you need to fix them.

Gene Hammett: Uh, you know, my research with a fast growth companies, um, I studied the inc $5,000 and we’ve shared a little bit of this, but yeah, I don’t know if I shared this particular detail, but of all the companies that were growing, uh, the one core concept that came out of these fast growth companies was we lead people to take full ownership of their work and have the goals and the process.

Gene Hammett: And when they feel like owners, they show up differently for work.

Mike Michalowicz: That is as the essence to business independence. Now, here’s, here’s the analogy. I use a lot of entrepreneurs. I met with Jane, and I know you’ve heard this too. They say, this is my baby, it’s a parent child relationship. I gave life this business. I’m now nurturing and growing it on the parent. It’s a child. And I believe that’s a horrible analogy. I think it’s more of conjoined twins. We, you know, we started a business, we share critical organs, we share a set of legs, everything, and therefore the extraction, uh, is a very surgical and slow process, very deliberate. One of the most
important steps. And you nailed it in your research. One of the most important steps is empowering employees, part time virtual help, even contractors and vendors to make a to manage outcomes.

Mike Michalowicz: Most employees and people, uh, resources that we use are actually taskrabbit’s. You say to me, I’m your employee. You Go, Hey, Mike, uh, do the invoicing. And it’s like, okay. And I come back a second later. I’m like, oh, should I start this by last name or first name and your last name and I come back a second later. Like, do you want me to build a quarterly increments or hourly? You see I’m doing the task, but anytime I hit a decision point, I’m coming back to you and now you know, imagine that over three or four employees, you can’t do an ounce of work. All you’re doing is jumping from spot to spot a business that can grow a business that can be independently owner. You empower the employee for the outcome, so that analogy or example you’d say, Mike, we need to
build clients accurately and timely.

Mike Michalowicz: We have a best practice of invoicing the best practice. If you hit a challenge or question, I’ve hired you not just for your abilities to do things, but for that brain on your shoulders, you must make a decision. That’s how we do it, and here’s the most important part, gene, that most entrepreneurs that struggle with this miss, we have to support the decision making. Even when the employee makes bad decisions. See, I come back right and I make a bad decision. I don’t invoice timely. You can’t say, God, Mike, you’re an idiot. I’m going to do it all because then we’re just taking responsibility back. You have to say, Mike, you know the decision. Did Not yield the outcome that we wanted. What do you think you could do next time to fix that by also wanting to realize, I reward you, Mike. I’m so proud of you for making a decision that you fell in the best interest of the company. It didn’t work out this time. Get back in there, champ. Go, go, go. That’s how we manage decisions

Gene Hammett: and that’s what happens over time where they start to think for themselves. They start to see those problems and solutions and you just get notified that it got fixed. I have that with my team right now. Um, something wasn’t working out and they’re like, we had to get another tool. Yeah. Okay, great. And Oh, by the way, the tool saved this money and I’m like, fantastic.

Mike Michalowicz: Well, you know, what’s a miraculous about that compared to what I struggled with is his ego. You, it sounds like you pulled your ego out. Me, I that first call with my colleague, she’s like, hey, we just upgraded our shopping cart for transactions. I’m like, we did what? What does it do? What? Tell me about it. Like, what? Why didn’t I know about this?

Mike Michalowicz: And I started to actually re insert myself in, which was an ego thing. I felt abandoned like I wasn’t needed. Um, I’ve gotten past that. I found that my ego is kind of fat and it’s very hard to just squash it by fan. I can redirect it. So I used to put significance in being a participant in my business. I now put significance and being the designer, my business, I say every time that Kelsey or Lee or Paul or Jeremy or somebody here is making a decision and they’re running with it, that my responsibility is to make sure that the team is working cohesively, that collectively they’re decisions are supporting other decisions, not even know they need to know what the decisions are. Eyes need to know that we’re moving toward a common outcome. So by redirecting my ego, when those things come up and I hear about the new shopping cart or something, I’m like, wow, that’s awesome.

Mike Michalowicz: I simply say, are we getting to point b? You have the vision we have for our organization

Gene Hammett: That’s exactly what we’re talking about. I want to dive into this because we opened this with four week vacation, but how you get there as you want a business that runs like clockwork,

Mike Michalowicz: right? Hence the title

Gene Hammett: and the title. Yes. Thank you. Um, and when I started reading this book and I didn’t get all the way through it because I literally want to go slow.

Mike Michalowicz: Oh, I love it.

Gene Hammett: Not because of any, like I don’t want. I’m not going to skim this book. I literally want to work it with my wife and working with my team. That’s what I want to do with this book. Was it
designed to work with the team?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. So this is the first book I wrote this this way.

Mike Michalowicz: That is a collective effort. I mean, the book is written from the entrepreneur perspective. My passion is entrepreneurs. I love us. I consider myself an entrepreneur, I love the community and I want entrepreneurial. My Life’s mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And I define that by financial poverty, time, poverty, soulfulness. Like some of us present our business. I want to fix that. Um, and so I wrote this book is from the Entrepreneur’s perspective, my goal is for the entrepreneur to have the freedom to work on the business as Michael Gerber would say as opposed to in the business, um, but to give them the freedom to participate in their business the way they want to because I don’t, I don’t know if I necessarily want to be fully extracted from my business and just sit back, you know, and looking down upon it. I love to do speaking.

Mike Michalowicz: I love writing books. I want to keep writing books. So I want the entrepreneur be able to insert themselves the way they want to as part of this book. It’s important that the team is empowered and so I hope they’ll read the book and I actually made these resources too so that they don’t read the book. At least they’ve co complementary resources to use with the idea that the employees see, wow, if genes working less and less in the business and he’s more of our visionary. That gives me an opportunity to level up my game, which is better for my life situation. So I designed
it for everyone to participate actively in it.

Gene Hammett: So let’s go into the book you grabbed me when you talked about going on vacation and filling the guilt and shame of not being there for the kids and wife and uh, my wife literally when we talk about vacation, she goes, where could we go where your phone doesn’t work?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, that’s what my wife wanted to do. So.

Gene Hammett: Why would you do that?

Mike Michalowicz: why are you came in one of the me I need to get. Yeah. So, uh, the honest truth is this, my story I think is very similar to our story is I went to the beach, was it a family tradition? Uh, and yet another year I started the morning by checking email and get on the phone making calls that we having to launch my. I’ll be late, I’m on a call, we go to the beach. My kids are playing among on the phone. I’m not present, right? So my body’s physically there, my mind is gone and that is not being present. And my wife, one of the turning moment, there was a couple of elements that triggered this. There was another person’s story that just made me write this book, but I, um, my wife said this is enough. She was angry and lonely, right?

Mike Michalowicz: She said, Mike, give me the phone. Drop it just by yourself. Just go and start walking. And uh, oh, I get chills thinking about it. I was walking down the beach. Remember just looking at these huge houses on the beach, Long Beach Island, New Jersey, these rich people. I’m like, God, I just wish I had that freedom. I wish I was like them. And as I look closer, I saw people just clicking and clicking and clacking away at their laptops on their decks. And so then I said, oh my gosh, maybe money isn’t. Maybe you don’t grow into one day. You don’t make enough money. That always just stops working. You have to stop working. Do you think? I thought if I could just sell more and more and more, I would never have to work in the business again. The morrow selling actually, the more stress it puts on my organization to deliver, the more stresses is putting on me.

Mike Michalowicz: That’s when I said, oh my gosh, this must be a different way. There’s a way to make the business grow, but without putting more stress on myself

Gene Hammett: and you’re really good at not only writing books but coming up with models inside books, there’s quite a few inside here. What’s, what’s one of the favorite ones that you can share with us that maybe give us some value about clockwork?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. So maybe one of them’s ACDC model. I’m not the band, um, but I, but I love the band. The band. Yeah. I know the frigging awesome. Uh, and, and, but this model is not as awesome as the band, but it will put you back in black. AC DC stands for the flow of all businesses. Every business goes through four stages. Now it doesn’t necessarily flow in the ACDC sequence, but every business central in every element.

Mike Michalowicz: And so I’ll tell you what they are. And then the goal is for us to find what the weakest link is approximately that to a sands for attracting prospects. Every business needs to attract an inflow, inquiries or demand for our offering. The next letter, c stands for convert those people who have inquired about our offering, we need to convert them to paying customers where they now say, I want your service or your product and I’m going to exchange money for that. That’s a customer’s committed. D stands for the delivery of our product or offering, and then the last c stands for the collections phase, collecting money. Now some businesses flow through in that way that we attract prospects. We make them to customers. They sign that contract, we deliver our goods and there’s a
check at the end of it. Other businesses, our ACC, d, which is we track prospects, convert them, they pay us up front, and then we deliver the goods.

Mike Michalowicz: Some companies I don’t like this model a attract prospects. Then deliver the goods. Then make them customers. That’s called Spec work. If you ever go 99 designs, you can order, you know a logo in 50 people will actually design your logo without you even being their customer. You pick your favorite and they become your, your vendor. Everyone else loses the business. That’s a DCC. The thing is we flow through it. We need to document where we flow. Then we had to look for what’s the weakest link, where do we currently have the biggest struggles? And fix that link because actually could chain, if you strengthen just the weakest link, the entire chain gets stronger because we focus on the weakest link. So look your ACDC flow and say, for example, just real quick maybe, um, I have, uh, my deliverable’s are really slow, meaning like we commit to getting stuff done in a week and it’s taken us a month.

Mike Michalowicz: That’s my problem is around deliverables. So the question is how do I speed it up? Or I look back in the chain and say, are we bringing on too many customers? Maybe they’re not even fit customers. Maybe our conversion is the issue because that comes with four D and I’m converting people into customers that shouldn’t be customers in the first place. Or maybe it’s an attraction situation route. Like early on. I’m telling any type of business, come on board, talk with us when we really should be focused on a niche. So when you look at your, where you have a slow down your business, see if you can fix that, slow down or look at the things that preceded and sees the problems. They’re fixed that weakest link and all of a sudden the entire business will elevate you.

Gene Hammett: You mentioned this earlier, Mike, I’m gonna give you a chance to go deeper into it.

Gene Hammett: One of the big roles we should play as business owners is not the doer and I don’t think that’s the word you used, but. But it’s the designer.

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. That has the word.

Gene Hammett: What do you mean by designer?

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, so I believe there’s four stages in a business. As an entrepreneur, we elevate through a. So doing is the first stage. That’s where we actually do the work that we deliver to our clients or do the work that supports the deliverables to the clients. Like I’m doing administrative work, I’m doing this, that supports the organization. The next level up is called deciding. That’s the analogy we talked about before where you telling me to do an invoice, I come back a second later and you have to make a decision on my behalf. Um, the problem with the design phases means there’s really no systems in place.

Mike Michalowicz: You’re just kinda shooting off the hip or from the top of your head and it’s a trap because you can only decide for so many people before you’re overwhelmed. Next level up is called delegation. We talked about that too. That’s the assignment of outcomes. There’s freedom for the entrepreneur once you sign the outcomes because you no longer needed to make decisions, but once the outcomes are being assigned, then we elevate up to the highest level which is designing. Here’s what designing is. It’s clarity on vision. Ironically, most businesses before they start a really good on vision, they say, this is what we’re going to be like. We’re going to do, you know, x number of millions or billions of dollars in revenue and customers will be raving. They can feel it, they can smell it. The day they opened the doors, they go full throttle doing and in panic ensues like, oh my God, no customers are coming.

Mike Michalowicz: Oh my God, there’s no sales and it becomes this word entrenched in doing, into perpetuity. Designing is getting back to that vision, but more or I should say as importantly with clarity, that vision is now making strategic decisions around our resources. I call it the choreographed dance of our organization. It’s organizing our resources, which are software tools are people, um, our systems all to get us to that vision and making strategic and tactical decisions on a daily or weekly basis to move us there. I called the thinking phase and in the book I talk about, you know, there’s a statue dedicated to this process. It’s the most important process in the world. Thinking there’s a statute called the thinker. There’s this naked guy sitting there with his chin on his fist, just thinking. And sadly for many of us, you know, we do it when we’re in the shower, but that’s about it.

Mike Michalowicz: We need to dedicate a good portion of time every day, an hour just giving ourselves thinking time. So that we can choreograph or organize our resources to get us where we want to go.

Gene Hammett: Well, everything about what you’re saying I think is very necessary. That’s one reason why you’re here on the show. I’m with looking at the, uh, the audience wanting to move toward clockwork. If they were to wake up tomorrow with a cup of coffee and other than get the book, what would you suggest them do? If they wanted the business to start to look,more like clockwork.

Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, the. Well, I would focus on the Qbr. I think this is the most powerful concept from the book. Sandra, queen, Queen B roll. And here’s what it boils down to. I was looking for organizational efficiency by interviewing organizations. I couldn’t find a common thread.

Mike Michalowicz: They all had their own secrets, if you will, but no common thread until I peeled back to a lower level. I actually looked at what I now believe is the most efficient organization in the world. It’s a beehive. Beehives are very efficient and scalability, very low use of energy, yet they can build hives, you know, overnight. Uh, right outside your window. It seems, and what I found is they fall a simple tool process. First of all, all bees know that the most important function of a high fruit survivability is the production of eggs a that’s called the Queen Bee roll. There’s a queen bee and she lays eggs constantly. They need a production because their lifespans are very short, so it’s constant production of eggs. So rule one is protect the Qbr, make sure it’s being served. Rule number two is once egg production is happening, then those, uh, those bees go out and do their primary job function, which could be collecting pollen or whatever.

Mike Michalowicz: Every organization has a queen bee role. The problem is entrepreneurs think that they, as a person or the Queen Bee, they’re the most important person and that’s a misconception. The Queen Bee is not the most important being she is disposable air quotes, like any other be a, if she’s not producing eggs, they remove her from the group that they will produce our spawn. A new queen bee. All that matters is the egg production. In every business, there’s a single or core function that business hinges is success on. That’s the queen b roll. There are people serving. They need to be protected to make sure they’re focused on that. If there’s a problem with it, ever needs to focus on it until it gets elevated. Again, here’s the quick example. Federal Express, what are they known for? Their brand promise is if your package absolutely, positively need to be delivered on time, we’ll do it.

Mike Michalowicz: That’s the brand promise and all of us have. It’s the one greatest thing we distinguish ourselves on. If you peel the onion back one layer, what is the activity that makes that thing a reality? And for Fedex, it’s logistics. Moving packages around and when they’re stressed on logistics happens every holiday season. The managers don’t say, hey guys, work harder. The managers get into trucks and deliver the damn package is when our organization, once we identify the one thing we want to be known for, we have to peel back the onion just one layer and say, what’s the core activity that supports that promise? That’s the queen b roll. Then we need to make sure that our best resources are allocated to making sure it’s moving efficiently as that tide rises. So do all boats and if it’s ever compromise, the rest of the team needs to help protect it or at least protect the people who are serving it so it can get back up to speed.

Gene Hammett: Love that. And, and it’s not easy to probably come up with that and really organize that. So I’m going to say go, go get this book a clockwork because you can understand it deeper. And, uh, I want to go ahead and, and say thank you for being here. If my audience wanted to get back in touch with you, Michael, where can they go?

Mike Michalowicz: Gene? Thank you for the opportunity to go to clockwork.life. That’s dot l I F E, I’ve all the resources we talked earlier about for employees that are up there, there’s a quick start guide for the entrepreneur themselves. So, uh, if you’re like me, when you get that new electronics, if you don’t want to read the instruction manual, the book, and just get started fast, there’s a quick star guide up there. It’s all for free at clockwork that life.

Gene Hammett: Awesome. Well, thanks for being here at leaders in the trenches and sharing your wisdom.

Mike Michalowicz: Thanks brother.

Gene Hammett: Wow, what a great interview. I just love talking with entrepreneurs like Mike who have stepped back, organize this, created stories around this, and really help you run your business the way you want to run it. I’m proud to share insights from this. I’m proud for you to support them with their books. I’m proud for you to, to get something out of it because hopefully you’ll look to me as someone who’s bringing you valuable content insights and that you will keep coming back over and over again. I love doing what I do. I love helping businesses grow and I love helping you. So if I can do anything for you, make sure you reach out. If you see my ads on facebook or linkedin or in social media, in any of the channels, make sure you engage with me like them, share them, whatever it may take because we want to share the word out there. It costs you nothing, but we’re able to spread the word beyond just you. So if I can do anything for you, make sure you reach out and let me know. As always, lead with courage and I’ll talk to you next time.

 

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

 

In this episode we’ll cover:

  • How to Run your Business like Clockwork
  • Business Visions
  • Employees and People
  • Spot to Spot Business
  • Essence to Business Independence
  • Spot to Spot Business
  • Goals and the Process
  • Implementation Strategies

Resources 

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