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Everybody tells you to systemize
your business, especially me,

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but what does it actually mean?

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How do you actually do it?

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Most people think systemizing
means finding the perfect tool

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that claims to automate everything.

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The most important tools for systemizing
are a clock, pencil, and paper.

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To systemize, here are the
key steps and I'll show you

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exactly how to do each of them.

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Hi, I'm David Ziembicki, and you're
about to learn how to grow from

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struggling solopreneur to successful
virtual CEO of your own expert business.

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Your knowledge and skills can change
lives and make the world a better place.

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Are you ready to hit the accelerator
to scale your results and impact?

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Then it's time to build
your expert business.

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Most of my 25 year career has been
about helping organizations from

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Fortune 100 and government agencies.

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down to small businesses and
solopreneurs systemize their business.

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The first step is analyzing
what you're currently doing.

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I worked at Microsoft for 17 years
and heard Bill Gates speak many times.

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I'm not 100 percent sure this quote is
his, but everyone thinks so, and it's

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been one of my mantras, so here it is.

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He said, The first rule of any
technology used in business is that

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automation applied to an efficient
operation will magnify the efficiency.

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The second is that automation
applied to an inefficient operation

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will magnify the inefficiency.

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The point is for you to define an
efficient process first, before you

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start automating or delegating it.

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But how do we even know
what our processes are?

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How do you get started?

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Have you ever heard of
a time and motion study?

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It's a technique that came
from the manufacturing world

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over a hundred years ago.

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Companies were trying to be more
efficient, and the starting point

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was measuring how much time was
being spent on each activity.

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The motion part was interesting as
it measured how far an assembly line

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worker moved to perform their task.

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It helped expose issues like, Joe has to
walk to the toolbox 22 times during his

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shift, and the toolbox is 30 feet away.

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If the toolbox was next to Joe, that
would save 20 minutes of time every day.

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The main idea is to take a typical
day, week, or month, and document

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what you do and any team members that
you have are doing in a granular way.

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So step one is documenting the current
processes or work they are doing.

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At a high level first, not detailed
SOPs unless you already have them.

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Step two is then capturing the
time spent on each of the main

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tasks and processes and by whom.

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Step three is highlighting
the ones that are recurring.

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What does that look like?

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This is where our trusty old
clock, pencil, and paper come in.

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Every 30 minutes or so, write down
the time and what you're working on.

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It can be as simple as planning
content or answering support emails.

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If you make a simple table, you
can also capture what tool, if any,

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you're using for the given task.

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You can also note which of the
nine essential online business

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systems that I talk about that
each piece of work aligns to.

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I know this sounds boring, but
the results will shock you.

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Very quickly, you'll see where your
time is going, how many tools you're

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using, and which of the nine essential
systems you spend most of your time on.

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If you do this over a week or a month,
you'll also capture all the recurring

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tasks that you do in your business.

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This is critical for capturing the
current state of your business.

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At this point, I hope you're
noticing a major omission so far.

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We've only captured what you are
doing, not what you should or

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want to do to grow your business.

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While you're doing your time and motion
study, also write down the things you

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wish you had the time or people to do.

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We need this baseline of what
you are doing and what you

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should do for the next steps.

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Next is design.

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At this point, you want to define
the desired state for your business.

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What needs to happen every day,
week, or month to generate the

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output you need to reach your goals.

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That's what systemization is.

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Defining everything in your business
in terms of the most efficient

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processes, procedures, and tools
that generate the desired result.

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At the highest level, there are
things like create a product,

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or market the product, sell the
product, and deliver the product.

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Then from there, you
break them down further.

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Within each, there are many sub processes.

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Take the content marketing
area that I talk about a lot.

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If your current process is random and
you do things differently each time, you

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do all the work yourself and jump from
tool to tool changing things each time,

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you don't have a system, you have a mess.

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If you try to apply tools or delegation
to that mess, as Bill G would say,

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you're going to amplify the mess.

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Instead, you want to
reverse engineer success.

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What needs to be produced each month
for your business to be successful?

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It could be as simple as,
you know, a content system.

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I need to publish weekly and repurpose so
that I have 100 social media posts going

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out across all my channels each week.

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In a traffic system, it could be, I need
to design and run two ad campaigns, one

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for awareness, one for conversion, to make
sure people see my content and offers.

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Cheers.

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The key is defining that ideal
month of outcomes that would deliver

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the business results you need,
then reverse engineer success.

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For the content system, what
are the processes and procedures

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needed to generate and
repurpose content at that scale?

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Same for the rest, what's needed in the
traffic, funnel, sales, and other areas?

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Writing that down is essential.

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Then another pass tries to
simplify and streamline the

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process as much as possible.

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Take the data from your time in motion
study and ask what can be eliminated.

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When I started building a content
team, this is what I did first.

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I could see that I was creating
thumbnails each week, editing

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videos, writing captions, spending
lots of time scheduling posts.

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Going through the above
process showed everything that

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needed to happen each week.

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The next step was determining
what could be automated.

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For automation, at this point you've
analyzed what you've been doing,

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you've documented what you should
be doing, and you've eliminated

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what you shouldn't be doing.

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You've done what Bill Gates suggested.

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You've defined a streamlined process.

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Now it's time to apply technology.

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The next pass is looking at all
your plan, processes, and procedures

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to identify what can be automated.

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I'll cover this in depth in
future videos, but here are a

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few simple examples for now.

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Look for recurring tasks
that can be easily automated.

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An example is generating good
transcripts from your content to

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use as blog posts or social media.

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You can easily have an automation
that looks for new video files

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in a given folder, triggers an
automation to transcribe them.

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Then a notification to
a team member to review.

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It's the same thing for
social media scheduling.

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You can set up tools such that every
time you create a post, it gets added

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to a queue to repost in the future.

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The key here is the compounding
benefits of more automation.

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Even if just once a week you take
a recurring task and automate

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it, the benefits stack quickly.

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If you've been doing this for a long
time, like I have, you'll notice that

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eventually you hit a point where the
work required to 100 percent automate

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a complex process starts to exceed the
cost of just paying someone to do it.

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And that's where the final
step of systemizing comes in.

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Delegating.

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For this step, we have a simple rule.

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If the given process or task is
strategic to your business and is a CEO

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level activity, then you should do it.

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Everything else should be
automated or delegated.

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Since you already automated what
could be in the previous step, the

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final one is delegating all the
remaining work to team members,

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freelancers, or service providers.

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As you know from my other content,
I believe in fractional teams

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as the first phase of delegating
in your online business.

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The benefit of a fractional team is
you get access to a broader and deeper

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set of people and skills than trying
to find one individual or virtual

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assistant that tries to do everything.

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Regardless, your work to analyze,
design, document, and automate your

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systems and processes will help you with
your delegation efforts dramatically.

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As you bring team members on, you'll
know exactly where to put them in

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your business, which processes and
procedures to delegate to them, and what

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the expected outputs are, and so on.

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So what's the result?

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A fully systemized business.

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It may take a few months or even a year
to do everything I've talked about in

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this video, but consider the end result.

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You would be working only on
strategic CEO level activities.

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Every process that is critical
to reaching your business goals

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has been designed and documented.

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Everything that can be
automated has been automated.

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And everything that can't be
automated has been delegated.

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That is priceless.

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The online business holy grail.