Why Dave Decided to talk to James:
Founder and CEO of Autopilot Entrepreneur, James P. Friel is an entrepreneur, consultant, and author who helps entrepreneurs systemize, grow, and scale their businesses by getting them out of the day to day operations of running their companies. Master of business analogies, James illustrates the systems and foundation businesses and entrepreneurs need to put in place in order to excel to new levels. Learn the 5 pillars every business has and how to maximize and sustain growth in each of them.
Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:
The 5 Pillars of every company (5:15) The difference between marketing and sales (8:30) Building a system (10:00) Setting Expectations (13:20) The importance of letting your foot off the gas for a moment (35:00)Quotable Moments:
"Sometimes, it’s not about applying more force, it’s about creating more bandwidth."
"All upset comes from unmet expectations."
"The most valuable resource we have is people."
"The bigger your team gets, the more you are going to be responsible for being the conductor of the orchestra, as opposed to the violinist."
"If you don’t make time to work on your business, you will always be stuck working in your business."
Other Tidbits:
Having an entrepreneur mindset is not the norm. Understanding that as a business owner and manager of people, the people under you might have a completely different mindset. Learning to communicate properly and understanding personality types is an important skill to develop as you go from solopreneur to team manager.
Links:
FunnelHackerRadio.com
FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial
FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar
---Transcript---
Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward
Speaker 2: 00:17 back. Everybody. This is going to be the ride of your life. I'm so excited for. I've had the opportunity of known this guy for quite some time and I want to make sure that you guys get to know him and a at a different level. I've had him on before and we talked about some really cool stuff. I mean the guy's totally brilliant, rocket science, brilliant type of stuff, but the cool thing is he's not only. So. First of all, before I go on about it, I want to first of all introduce Mr James P friel. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: 00:43 Dave, I'm so excited to be here with you today. Thank you for having me, man.
Speaker 2: 00:47 So this is one of the things, I don't know. You're one of our two comma club x coaches, which is amazing and super cool. You've actually been here at Klick falls. We helped us for the last six months, systematized and ton of this stuff and I think at times you kind of get pigeon holed in this trello. Again, I want to make sure that doesn't happen, so I want to break that code right now. Again, you're the CEO co founder and CEO and founder of the autopilot entrepreneur, which is just a super cool concept and I think the part I'm liking the most right now is, uh, were just talking offline about your new website and this whole idea as far as that you help entrepreneurs systematize the game to grow and scale your business, own an asset that works for you, enjoy freedom, income and peace of mind is the stuff that I just love. Especially this whole idea as far as systematizing the game. I know you got a new book coming out and you've just got so much crazy stuff going. So with that, everybody, again, I wish you guys could stand up and give a huge welcome and round of applause to Mr James P friel, but to James again, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Speaker 3: 01:45 Oh, Dave. Yeah, it's my pleasure, man. It's always, uh, always amazing talking with you and getting to hang out and I think, you know, um, for me business business is a game, right? Business is, in my opinion, one of the coolest games imaginable. There's so many moving pieces and parts. There's, there's people, there's like, there's customers, there's employees, there's, there's a, you know, there's technology, there's like all these different things going on and uh, ever for as long as I can remember, I always want to know like, all right, well how does it all work? Right? And that's sort of been a, a very like driving thought of mine. Most of my life is like how, how does everything work? I love figuring out how things work. Like when I was a kid I took everything apart to try and put it back together and I feel like that passion and excitement really got channeled towards business. You know, I don't know, probably like 15 years ago or so, and what I've, what I've realized is most entrepreneurs that I've come in contact with go about doing their thing with massive amounts of trial and error. And just hoping that's something is going to work instead of recognizing that every of success in every area of life imaginable has rules of the game and there's ways to become better at it. And so that's really what I'm excited about sharing with people is how to systemize that game.
Speaker 2: 03:12 I appreciate that because I know for me, I've always looked at it's why I'm so fascinated about business. The same type of thing that you just mentioned is it is a game. And I think what I love you just made mention of is too often people kind of go into this haphazardly like, uh, you know what, I've got this passion, I got this idea, maybe I'll try this, you know, and, and there's such a huge difference between having a product and having a business. And I think so there's nothing wrong with having a product and having a product lifestyle and doing, there's nothing at all wrong with that. And we have a lot of people inside of our click funnels community who do just that. And then at the same time we've, you know, we've got over 360 people now going over a million dollars inside of a sales funnel.
Speaker 2: 03:49 I know you've coached quite a few of them, got over 26 people and now I've done over 10 million and at that point, once you start getting to those dollar amounts, you've got something substantive substantial going on. And I parked that I love most about what you teach and people you work with. This is to see how fast they can get there, how fast, if they really focused on the game, the speed and implementation as they really focus, they actually are able to accelerate the growth that most people can't. It's like hiring a good coach in athletics. And again, I look at, we talked about the game and I think so often there's so many comparisons to fitness and we were just joking about how sore your legs are from begged you and beating you up to doing a million lunges and barbell squats and all that stuff. But again, it's all part of the game. So with that I do, I want you to kind of dive in, what are some of the key components, what are some of the rules to the game that you found as you've worked with? I mean, you work with some amazing, amazing companies.
Speaker 3: 04:41 Yeah. Well I've, I've been, uh, I've been very fortunate to have had those opportunities and then to help other people create great results. But I think I'm one of the, one of the things that I've been recognizing a lot lately and this is stuff that's going in the book and it's stuff that I've been really teaching people a recently, is that no matter how big the business is, like because I've, you know, I've worked with, you know, solo preneurs all the way up to, you know, my, my experience in working with companies that have hundreds of thousands of employees and every single company has five, five pillars that are present. Even if you don't immediately identify them in and consciously. Being aware of those five pillars is so important for how you manage the business and how you manage the growth and those. There's pillars. We're not going to sound like anything like a crazy to anybody, but their their marketing, which is getting people to raise their hands and say, hey, I'm interested.
Speaker 3: 05:42 It's sales. Getting people to shake hands and say, yeah, let's do this together. Delivery, giving people the thing that they paid you for operations, which is the glue that keeps everything working together and the gears, they everything moving and finance, which is simply making sure that we're measuring how much money we're making. We understand the health of the business, right? And, and I think like at the early stages of growth, everything feels very mushed into like one giant blob. Like I just got to do something to make more money. Right? And, and that's true to a certain extent in terms of getting sales traction in the marketplace, but you really need to identify these five pillars and understand what things you need to do in each one of those pillars in order to continue to grow the business and create an asset that works for you.
Speaker 3: 06:36 And we have this thing we call the traffic light rating system and it's red, yellow, and green. And so we look at each one of those five pillars and we say, okay, well where is it red, yellow or green? Red Is there's no systems in place. Everything takes a ridiculous amount of work and effort to get something out the door. The results are inconsistent. We don't know when we're going to get a result. Yellow. We might have some of the core components of the system, people, processes and tools being developed, but they're not working together yet. And so we're. We're making progress, but our results are still a little bit sporadic. And then green, which is when we have people and we have processes and we have tools and all of them are working together. That's when we get leverage as a business owner, right when we have things at green.
Speaker 3: 07:27 And so what we've been able to do very quickly is say we've got these five pillars and each one of them can be red, yellow, or green. And almost in five minutes we can say here's where the business is in trouble and here's where they're doing really well and here's what we need to focus on next. And where we need to put systems in order to get this thing to the next level and it's almost become like is very high level your entire business on one sheet of paper, like overview, a very zoomed out level like what do I need to focus on in order to get to the next level? It's been very, very cool.
Speaker 2: 08:02 So if a person is listening to going, okay, so now I understand my five pillars and when they start looking at that red, yellow and green where some of the things they can do
Speaker 3: 08:11 to kind of get started right now and say
Speaker 2: 08:14 there's obviously if I have a system that's one thing, but what are some more of the details? What are they, what's the nitty gritty stuff that need to be looked at as far as. And I think if you don't mind clarify for people that difference between marketing and sales for some reason I talked a lot of people and it always gets so muddied up. So if you don't mind kind of clarifying that as well.
Speaker 3: 08:30 Yeah, for sure. So, so super high level. And I think sometimes it gets a little bit muddier when you're talking about online sales, but marketing is what generates interest, right? Marketing is what hooks people and causes them to say, Hey, I want to find out more. Right? And, and sort of leads them into the funnel in terms of online sales. Marketing is like the advertising that gets people to the funnel. Marketing is the thing that, you know, the social posts like the paid ads, like all those things that are generating interest that get the click, that get people to go where we want them to go. Sales is where we, where we closed the deal, right? Sales is when people go from saying, Hey, I'm interested to, yes, I want to do this with you. Right? And so, uh, you know, so this is what's so amazing about clickfunnels is that we can get, you know, all of that traffic, all that interest to basically our online salesmen, which is, you know, the funnel.
Speaker 3: 09:27 And, and that's where we closed the deal. Um, you know, if you have an offline sale, it's gonna be, you know, your marketing is going to be something that generates the lead, but your salesperson is going to be the guy that closes the deal and I think that those two things are very complimentary and they go hand in hand, but they're not one in the same. They're different and require different things to create a great advertising campaign as opposed to building a great sales funnel. Right? Those are going to require two different skill sets, potentially two different groups of people, but you need both of them in order to convert the interest into dollars in your bank account.
Speaker 2: 10:07 So if I look at, I remember when I first got started, I was the solo preneur and I remember when I hired my first employee, it was like the biggest stress in my life, freedom. And I'm like, oh, I got to pay for this person. I found myself working and so help me understand, um, what I'm looking at this red, yellow, green if, and again you can pick whichever size company you want, but if it's, in fact I'll just kind of let's say that they're already making sales so they're not starting. They've, let's say they're at the six figure level. We've hit that six figure club, but we're sitting there between, we'll just call it between $80,000 and 150 or 200,000. Sure. That seems to be the word. A lot of people get stuck. It's like it's a good enough lifestyle by myself, but if I want to start bringing other people in, how do I start creating systems and where does that red, yellow, green come in? Because as far as marketing, I might be, I might have outsourced my facebook ads and I'm paying two or $3,000 a month to have someone run those. I've got my sales funnel up, but as far as opt, I really don't have operations and where I'm looking at as far as my finances, it's basically, I don't know, maybe quickbooks or I'm hiring some accounting on the side who doesn't really know my business. Help me understand. I know we have a lot of our listeners who are in that in that range, help them.
Speaker 3: 11:20 Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. So, so using, using that five pillars framework and the red, yellow, green, the person that you're describing, their marketing might be at yellow or green right there. Sales might be yellow or green, but they're delivering their operations could potentially be at red, right? Meaning that if we just continue to pour more and more sales into this thing, eventually we're going to crumble under the stress of the sales that we're producing. Right. That I don't a consistent structure to deliver on those sales and I don't necessarily have a way of operating my entire business that supports all of the sales that are coming in. And so we'd say, okay, if you're at, you know, yellow or green and marketing and your read on delivering operations, the goal is to continue to grow the business, right? But in order to grow the business, we've got to remove the things that are standing in our way of growing the business, right?
Speaker 3: 12:21 Like sometimes it's not just about applying more force, it's about creating more bandwidth and uh, and, and that's what needs to be done in that particular case. And so we'll say, all right, great. So what we need to do is we need to figure out how do we increase our, increase our throughput, right? And that would be an assistant that helps us operate more effectively. And, and in my, in my way of seeing things, a system is the combination of people and processes and tools and all of those things working together. So you know, if we're talking about the solo preneur who's got a pretty good life, you know, making six figures or something like that and they say, yes, I do want to get to the next level. Part of that is going to require people. But like you said, in your experience and my experience at the beginning as well, hiring those people is not only expensive but it's extremely stressful because you're like, what do I tell them to do?
Speaker 3: 13:20 Now you're just like, oh my God, now I have people that are asked, looking at me, asking me what to do. And so the way that I think about it is we need to put, we need to put systems in place first and then hire people to plug into those systems so that they're not disorganized when they actually start working for us. And I didn't always recognize this in my corporate days. I had a big team, but I wasn't the one who had to put the systems in place. I just was lucky enough to just manage a bunch of people. And. And that was it. And then I got out on my own, I was like, all right, let me just start hiring people. And it was like herding cats. It was like a complete mess. And so I very quickly realized that until I could have a coordinated way of telling people what to do and making sure that they do it and then being able to know what was expected of them, it was going to be really difficult.
Speaker 3: 14:13 And so hiring people, you know, is, is one of the key parts of building a system and that's, you know, first and foremost, like what do I want to give that person to do? What is their role going to be? What are their responsibilities going to be if I just hire somebody hoping that they're going to come in and read my mind and improve my situation, like I'm going to be disappointed in, that person's going to be frustrated and we're going to have a massive disconnect, right? So we need to be clear on what their role is, what their responsibilities are going to be. And, and it sounds crazy obvious once you hear it, but it in the moment of all the stress and overwhelm trying to figure this out, you don't recognize that you need to ask yourself, how am I going to know that this person is successful?
Speaker 3: 14:59 Like what does good look like? Right? And taking a short amount of time upfront to figure out those things will lead to a much smoother onboarding processes in a much more fulfilling relationship with that person in the long run because you actually know what slot in the company you're trying to fill them in. And uh, and I don't think a lot of people take the time to do that and it winds up costing them a ton of money that, that they don't really have to, they don't have to have that kind of experience if they take 10 minutes and they plan things out a little bit better ahead of time.
Speaker 2: 15:36 No, I love that. It's one of the things I enjoyed, uh, when we were working with you here at click funnels was the interview process. We did a lot of hiring. When you're, when you're consulting with us and you're extremely good in the hiring process and I think part of that goes back to what you were just referring to as far as you're really. One of things I love about James is you're so awesome at creating a framework and I think it not only, it makes it easier for the person who's doing the hiring, but also it makes it so much easier for the person who's coming on board. There's nothing more frustrating than a. In fact, I was just talking to the person we hired to run a lot of our, our coaching or speaking team and you know, it last, it was late last night and he was leaving the office and he hadn't been talking to Russell and Russell said, you know, Dave, his biggest concern is it doesn't want to let you down.
Speaker 2: 16:19 Yeah. Thought, you know what? If he's saying that that first, I think it's great, but it also, first thought I had was I probably haven't given them enough of an outlier as far as what his real job is and he shouldn't be feeling that way. If he knows that this is my expectations, and so I, I seriously, I thought last night and this morning I've got to do a better job of making sure he knows exactly what's expected of them because there's nothing more frustrating for someone who's trying to do a good job and not know what they're being measured up against and you've just always been so awesome at creating that framework. So we've talked before quite a bit, James, about this whole idea as far as companies who are at it's, it's either one, three or seven. It's $100,000, 300,000, $700,000 million. It's 3 million, 7 million, 10 million seemed to be.
Speaker 2: 17:04 Those are some of the big barriers where you have to stretch and you grow during those transitions, but part of that really comes in this hiring process and in the framework that you've always built around that. So if a person's out there and they're hiring their first or second or third or fourth person, which for most of our clients, most people inside of clickfunnels, their teams are usually under 10. Right? And so those hires are really super critical because it's not a common and wearing multiple hats, how have, what is the system that you've created that helps people really identify what those roles and those responsibilities are? Because for a lot of the Solo preneurs they've just been doing it all and they just expect everyone's going to know how to pick it up.
Speaker 3: 17:44 Yeah, absolutely. And, and nobody is a mind reader much to my much my extreme disappointment. You know, nobody, nobody knows how to read your mind and until they, until they figure out how to do that sort of technology, we're all sort of stuck with us as people and we're all imperfect and uh, you know, trying to do the best we can for the most part. And so I think that, I think the first thing, Dave, that is, is where I look, it's, it's top down and you know, not to beat a dead horse, but if I go back to the five pillars in the red, yellow, green, and I know I'm, I'm read marketing and I'm red on sales, that's going to be looking for a different person. Then if I'm green on marketing and I'm red on delivering operation, so like first of all, figuring out like where is the need inside of the organization in order to get the whole company to get to the next level so that we're not just sort of arbitrarily figuring something out.
Speaker 3: 18:42 I think that's the first thing, right? And so let's just say, you know, we're looking for somebody in, in sales, maybe we need a salesperson, right? Like I just recently hired a full time sales guy and went through this exact thing. I'm myself and so I'm, I'm looking at saying, all right, great. I have a need for the sales role, right? And here's what that person is going to be responsible for. They are going to be responsible for following up with all of our leads. They're going to nurture the people who fill out applications. You're going to make sure that everyone who does buy, you know, they follow up with them a certain amount of time afterwards so that we have an up sell opportunity, right? Like, I'm, I'm very clear on what I want that person to do. And then we, and then we say, or a great, how am I going to know whether that person is successful and we have to set metrics in place, right?
Speaker 3: 19:32 Like you can't measure anything if you like, if you don't have a measurement by which to kind of stack it up against and, and it's, it's not always the easiest thing to figure out the metric, but it's important. Right. So for this role in particular, sales role I think is sometimes a little bit easier. You know, what, what's our conversion rate, right? Like what's our close rate that we're getting and what do I expect us to get it? Maybe my expectation is crazy because I'm overly optimistic, but at least we have an expectation and then we can sort of calibrate between what's actually happening in that expectation. That. And that really goes regardless of whatever role it is. And so like the guy that, the guy that you're hiring to work on the speaking team, right? How many speaking engagements do you expect them to have them on?
Speaker 3: 20:21 What kind of conversion rate you expect them to have when he's going out and doing the presentations, right, and all of those things and so you know, your role is you're the speaker, you know, the, the road shows, speaker for click funnels and your responsibilities are x, yZ, , etc. Measures of success. This is how i'M gonna measure you. Right? And like those three things alone at least start to get us in the ballpark of how we're going to define success in that relationship. And one of The things that's so important is that one of my early mentors had this great quote that I absolutely love. He said all upset comes from unmet expectations and I think that goes on both sides, right? Like if you're expecting this guy to go out there and crush it, but you haven't defined what crush It means and he's expecting to go out there and crush it, but he is a totally different expectation.
Speaker 3: 21:14 He's like, dave, I did 17 presentations this month and we got five sales. You're going to be like, what on earth is going wrong out there? But maybe he's excited about it. And there's like a massive disconnect in that upset is going to come from those expectations that were never aligned. And so I think one of the things that I see, um, is, is so rare is just, uh, the desire for clear and direct communication. Um, and, and you know me well enough to know that I'm a, I'm a pretty direct communicator. Um, and I'm not beating aRound the bush and I'm not saying there's not other valid styles of communication, but in terms of making sure everybody is on the same page, just make sure everyone's on the same page and don't be afraid about, you know, setting those expectations and letting other end creating the space for other people to debate whether those expectations are realistic because then at least you get to a common ground on which to manage that relationship against.
Speaker 3: 22:19 And I think that's, that's a huge thing that, you know, that the greatest leaders among us are the ones who have the clearest expectations for the people that are working for them. And uh, and, and that I think not only helps us as entrepreneurs and business owners and in leading our companies, but it also, it also provides a tremendous amount of security and confidence for the people that are working for us because they know when they're meeting the expectation and they know when they're not and they don't ever have to wonder like, oh man, his name is james upset with me, or like, does dave think I did something wrong or anything like that because we're really setting those expectations up front. And then we're revisiting them on unregular interval, right? Like, think About, um, when we were in grade school, if you never got a report card until you graduated eighth grade and then your eighth grade teacher is like, you know what, dave, you sucked for the last eight years, we're going to have to hold you back.
Speaker 3: 23:26 You'd be like, why didn't you tell me sooner? Right. Like, you'd be upset. And, uh, and, and we don't, I think in the workplace we don't recognize the need to give each other feedback frequently enough according to what our measurements of success are. And it doesn't just a, it's not just a thing for the employee, it's a negative thing for us as employers to, because we're not maximizing the investment that we're making in that person. And uh, you know, and to quote warren buffet, he said, our job as business owners is to be the allocator of resources and the most valuable resources we have our people and if we're not maximizing the investment we're making in those people, then that means we're losing money and like nobody wants to lose money, but it's not, it's not as easy to see as some of the other things that are happening inside the business. So that's probably a pretty long winded answer, but it's, it's definitely one of the areas that I'm passionate about is how do we set up the game in order to get the most out of the people that are helping us because that's pro. If we're hiring good people, that's probably what they want to do anyway.
Speaker 2: 24:38 I love it. I think it's, you've been become literally the master at systematizing the game. And I think as you, as I look at your framework, as far as those five pillars and the red, yellow, green, I know for myself, especially when I first got started, there was a lot of times where I did. I unfortunately set people up for failure and I did get frustrated a ton because I was like, gosh, why can't you just figure this out? And I'm like, you know what? Not everybody is an entrepreneur and not everyone is. And again, that's why I've. I've loved, I know you're a master at understanding those 16 personalities and understanding people. I think that for me has been one of the things I've appreciated and I've learned so much from you, james, is really understanding how best to work with people and realizing that a lot of the people who come to workforce, what they want is security and wants to ability.
Speaker 2: 25:28 They want to know that they're going to be safe and they're being protected. And I think that the best way of doing that is setting them up to succeed by giving them very, very clear expectations. It's again, it goes back to your red, yellow, green, or even your your grade report card type of thing. When you know what the grade is, I didn't know. I can either apply more effort or I can coast a little here or whatever, wherever you might be, but for me, as I've looked at the way you've done that, I'm. I'm fAscinated by the way you are able to really spend a whole bunch of time allocating human resources. Probably one of your greatest skill sets that I've appreciated, I've seen you work with other companies, is really helping people to understand that is the most important piece of capital any business owner has.
Speaker 2: 26:14 I mean it really, really is. I know we talked so much about marketing dollars, your sales dollar, all that. Nothing's more important than the people and you can get those people to and we spent a whole bunch of time focus on, you know, our click funnels culture as well as our own employee culture and I think that that as I take a look at what you've done, I hope people really take time and go back and listen to us because the framework of those five pillars is so critical as a business owner and then as you go through the red, yellow, and green and rate those, you didn't know where you need to look at, what is the human capital I need to invest in to systematize and make that thing work. So again, I appreciate so much your skill set and doing that.
Speaker 3: 26:56 Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share. I think, um, you know, we as entrepreneurs have a very peculiar mindset and way of being in the world, right? It's not statistically speaking, it's not normal. We're not, we are not normal, right? We are, we are the outliers. And uh, you know, maybe three percent of people really are entrepreneurs. That means the other 97 percent are not and when we come at them like, hey, you should be an entrepreneur like me. We're sort of fighting that whole trend instead of just embracing what is a beautiful ecosystem where certain people want to take more risk, certain people want to have, you know, different things and do different things and other people just want something that's different and for us as as business owners and entrepreneurs to be able to create a place were those people are not just welcomed but appreciated for who they are and what they bring to the table and how they can be part of that larger contribution. I think it's something that we miss out sometimes a by wishing people were more like we are and I know I've been there and now I'm sort of have a totally different mindset. I'm happy
Speaker 2: 28:15 that there's not everybody crazy. Like I agree with you completely. It's got a funny. You mentioned that we were working here late last night and one of the guys, you know who works for me, we were literally having this conversation just came up at 16 personalities came up and were sitting there saying, I want to be an entrepreneur so bad, and yet I've just, I just don't have a real high d, but I've got this huge economic drive and I'm like, just because you have a huge economic drive doesn't mean that you have to be an entrepreneur. I think at times people get that confused. You don't have. There's a lot of ways of, of fulfilling a lot of your other values in your life than having to be an entrepreneur. And I know that, uh, right now this whole entrepreneurship thing seems to have been glamorized quite a bit.
Speaker 2: 29:00 And when you and I both started to, it wasn't that way was a kIds who basically couldn't get a job. I remember even talking about the yacht and her first feelings about you as an entrepreneur. This guy obviously can't make any money, but I think it's. I appreciate what you've, you've mentioned there that you can't expect everybody, unfortunately, not everyone is that way and allows that opportunity. I'm working for you. So as we get close to wrapping things up here, as a person who's going to go from being that solo preneur and from just one or two people to that five to 10, it's a big change. Once you get to tHat five to 10 range, what are some of the things you start wearing more of a management hat and you know, or suggestions you could give to those who are in
Speaker 3: 29:42 that situation becoming more of a manager. Yeah. Well the, the number one thing you've got to, you've got to recognize that your contribution is not going to be as much a, the doing of the thing anymore as it is the setting the stage for the other people to do the thing. And that's a. And that's not the easiest transition to make. Um, uh, so, so I think just understanding that mindset, that the more, the more you grow in, the bigger your team gets, the more you're going to be responsible for being the orchestra. The conductor of the orchestra as opposed to the violinist and you might be an amazing violinist, but if you're staying in the chair playing the violin the whole time and there was nobody conducting the orchestra, then in the orchestra is going to sound like crap. And so you've got to be able to make that transition.
Speaker 3: 30:31 And I know, uh, I know for me, you know, with a lot of the operating systems that we put in place, it's specifically designed so that I can give people things to do and they can take tasks and they can work on projects and objectives and initiatives and have ownership of those things, but I can still oversee what everybody is working on. And um, and you know, like a, you look at, you look at it like a company like mcdonald's and their processes are so well defined, right? That they're not just hiring the 16 year old kid who wants to work part time while he's going to high school and saying, hey, hey, come on in and just sorta make burgers and do whatever you want. And hopefully it all comes together. They have like all these processes that are defined and um, and they plugged that person into those processes and I think that's what we need to do to.
Speaker 3: 31:27 And, and I know a lot of people will say, well, I don't have time to do that. Right? And, and I'm too busy with all the other things going on and it's so cliche, but it's so true. If you don't make time to work on your business, you will always be stuck working in your business. And I believe that whether you're one person trying to expand two to five people trying to expand to 10 or 100 people trying to expand to 200, you need to have dedicated time where you're working on your business in order to build those systems, to pull people in and make sure that the processes are right. Make sure that they have the right tools to be able to do their job, to make sure you have the right job descriptions and measurements of success in everything in place. And um, and it's so incredibly critical to build, you know, as you grow to be the person who's building the structure for those systems so that everybody else can do their job well and that you can measure how well those jobs are being done.
Speaker 3: 32:29 And uh, you know, google is just a great example of how they've grown over the years with this, this concept of 80 percent of their time spent on doing things that are gonna generate revenue today and that our current projects in 20 percent of their time is spent on things that aren't sanctioned projects that are just specifically designed hopefully to make the company better in the future. And you know, in a five day work week, that means four days of the week people work on things that are on the books in one day. It means they work on things that aren't. Gmail came out of that paradigm, right? Like somebody was just like, oh, like I'm going to try and create a web based mill. And then it started taking off and they turn it into a real project. And I'm not saying that entrepreneurs have the luxury at first of spending one full day a week on working on their business, but you can't tell me like I believe it would be a bold face lie to tell me and to look in the mirror and tell yourself I don't have 30 minutes a week to carve out to work on my business.
Speaker 3: 33:34 Right and do it. And maybe that 30 minutes becomes an hour in that hour becomes an hour and a half over time. But if you're not working on your business, like you're never going to really make the kind of progress that you want to because the business requires a leader to oversee the entire thing. And that's part of what it means to be an entrepreneur and to grow a company is to be the person who steps into that role.
Speaker 2: 33:57 Wow. I may have. I can't tell you. I, I heard that years ago and I wish I would've listened to it because for the longest time I kept thinking, I, I don't, I don't have time to work on my business. That's a, that's a luxury. And it wasn't until I forced myself, and again, you may find you take it, you may lose a little bit of money in the beginning when you do that, but as you take that step back, it actually propels you five to 10 steps forward. And again, I hope I'm going to just. I wrote it down just because I. You always doubted these words of wisdom. I'm always writing down and that's whatever might just look at it. You don't take the time to work on your business. You will always be working in your business. And man changed. That for me was probably the biggest mistake I made in my twenties and early thirties was I just kept thinking, I'll just put more time into it. I'll put more time in and thinking that by my putting more time in magically some system was going to appear that was going to take me out of it. And it never ever did.
Speaker 3: 34:56 It doesn't end. It doesn't. And we like as we're, we're driven people as entrepreneurs and so therefore we think the only way to granted result is by applying more force. And it's not like the real way to get what we want is by figuring out how to create leverage and systems create leverage and like think of it this way, if you're, you know, let's say you got a really nice sports car, it's, you know, six speed manual transmission. Not too many people have manuals anymore, much to my disappointment, but, but if you, if you step on the gas in first gear and you refused to shift gears and all you do is keep your foot to the floor, like you're only gonna go so fast, you have to let your foot off the gas just to touch, to be able to shift into second. So you go faster and then into third and so on. And it's. And it's the same thing when we're, when we're driving our businesses, we have to be willing to sacrifice just a tiny, tiny little bit of our maximum output to create the space so that we can get to the next level and we can switch gears and actually go that much further once we switch gears.
Speaker 2: 36:07 Oh my gosh, I love it. I just got to take one more note here now. I love the analogy I've, I've seen that happen so many times in my own personal life and I get, I appreciate so much your time. I, your friendship means the world to me. It's nice having you here in boise as well. We're both transplants. It's been fun. So thanks again. James. Any other parting words? Oh, by the way, first of all, I want to make sure people know where to get you, so how can they connect with you? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: 36:35 Uh, so they could just go to my website, james p friel.com. That's f r I e l, so just james p dot [inaudible] dot com. And they can find out about, there's some free downloads there. There's a lot to check out our podcast, which is a lot of fun and a whole bunch of other things and if they want to connect, that's probably the best place to go.
Speaker 2: 36:54 Awesome. James, any other parting words before we let you go?
Speaker 3: 36:57 No, just, uh, just really appreciate being here with you today, dave. Thanks for letting me share. I always fun to connect and I look forward to, uh, you know, seeing people take this stuff and really apply it. Like that's, that's really what gives me a lot of fulfillment is when, when people will actually take action. So if you guys are listening to this today, know it doesn't have to be a huge monumental thing, but take action on a little bit of something and your business will be better off for it and I'm sure your life will be too.
Speaker 2: 37:25 Oh, awesome. Thanks so much man. We'll talk soon. Thanks dave.
Speaker 4: 37:29 Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'm more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people would like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do that do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.
