You don’t need
- Systems,
- SOPs,
- Rocks,
- Smart goals,
- Scoreboards,
- Time blocking,
- Assistants,
- Overseas workers,
- Slack,
- Or meetings
to scale.
I’ve built companies to $450 million without any of that.
My results are child’s play.
Mark Leonard acquired 600 software companies to build an $80 billion company with something far more powerful than systems.
Warren Buffett built a trillion dollar company without meetings, SOPs, or a computer.
Elon Musk owns six multi-billion dollar companies without Rocks.
A Self-Scaling Company
You can build a business that grows on its own. One that prospers, competes, succeeds, and scales.
A business that produces cash flow, income, and profit for you every month.
A company which requires zero meetings, zero day-to-day work, zero involvement on your part, if you wish. (Or, you can do that which you love in your business, nothing more.)
Any company can self-scale.
You do what lights you up, not what keeps the lights on. Build more wealth, grow more companies, travel, spend time with your family, help others.
A self-scaling company thrives without you. First, you need to get out of the sandwich shop.
Are You a Subway Franchise Operator?
Most entrepreneurs are stuck.
They spend years learning business, marketing, finance, management. The hire, fire, sweat, and stress.
For what?
To toil in the back room of their Subway shop. One step removed from making sandwiches. Little more glorious. No more free. No more fun. Little wealthier.
If you must make sure ingredients are ordered, sandwiches are made, bills are paid, and lights are turned off, you’re not a business owner; you’re a sandwich shop manager with a laptop.
Systems Keep You Stuck
Fast food restaurants have great systems. Ordering, cleaning, preparing, serving, hiring, managing, firing.
Do you want to be a McDonalds manager?
I don’t think so.
You’re a slave to your systems.
You’ve been told you need standard operating procedures (SOPs), a color-coded Google Calendar, impeccable Slack channel names, objectives and key results (OKRs), KPIs, and org charts.
Throw all of that away.
You love your systems; they don’t love you.
To build the life and business you want, you need a tool more powerful than systems.
Warren Buffett’s Little Secret
How does Buffett operate a trillion dollar company with more than 60 large, wholly owned businesses, including the $200 billion BNSF railroad company?
Not with systems. He’s too smart for those.
Incentives.
The Omaha investor paid $1.7 billion for Clayton Homes in early 2003. He made the deal over the phone. Buffett still hasn’t been to Tennessee.
22 years later, Berkshire Hathway still owns Clayton Homes.
To operate many multi-billion dollar businesses, all Buffett needs is the right incentive structure.
He acquires a business with a good manager — or promotes one if a replacement is needed. Buffett gets the incentives right so that manager thinks and acts like an owner. The Oracle of Omaha monitors the business’s performance, often with a monthly financial report, and replaces the CEO if necessary.
Buffett repeats the same process again and again, acquisition after acquisition. The same framework. Right in front of our eyes.
We with our tiny businesses think nobody can run our operations as well as we can. We’re wrong.
The Day You Realize You’re Not Special is the Day You Get Rich
You spent years building your company. You know every product, every marketing channel, every dollar in and out.
You’ve achieved some success. You think you’re special.
You’re not.
Either am I. The day I realized that is the day I got free.
No more managing employees. No more meetings. No more late nights. No more “have to dos” to keep the lights on.
There are many people as smart as you. Many as hungry and driven as you. Many as capable as you.
You only need one.
Arm the right person with the right incentives and you’re free for life. They run your business. You do whatever you want. They build systems (if they want).
You monitor cash flow and profits. Nothing else. One hour per month maximum. Four hours a week is too much. Tim didn’t go far enough.
Someone else is ready to run your business for you. Find them. Align their compensation with your goals. If they don’t work out, replace them.
You don’t need another system.
Start Now
Why did you start your business?
To feel special? To attend marketing conferences and speak about Amazon or TikTok algorithm updates?
I doubt it.
That’s the trap.
You start your business to get free. You stay stuck in your business to feel special.
There’s a better way.
Own unlimited businesses. Do whatever you want with your time.
Get free so you can wake surf with me on a Monday afternoon when the lake is empty.
Disassociate your income and wealth from your time. Then you no longer live for money.
True success is on the other side of systems.