Finding a Balance

There’s a Pinterest problem that began with decorating and has spilled over into businesses. It begins innocently enough, with the theory that if you make something stylish, fun and fabulous enough then the most mundane and lackluster tasks will become enjoyable.

“They want someone to talk about systems and can’t find anyone…”

That sentence from my buddy Noah Kagan forever changed my business. See, I’d finally “come out of the closet” so to speak and shared that I was teaching systems when Noah and I were chatting one day. Noah had been talking to Mixergy founder Andrew Warner who expressed that if he wanted to talk SEO there were entrepreneurs lined up around the block, but he couldn’t find anyone to talk systems.

Here’s the thing… systems don’t sound so sexy!

It’s just not glamorous and I’ve never heard an entrepreneur brag “yeah, I was up until 3am revising my operations manual on appropriate phone policies” or “I have to cancel going to the movies, there’s this system I need to write…”

To be fair, I’ve studied a lot of gurus and their systems and even though I love the work, even I get bored! I’m just not the type of person who wants a Dewey Decimal System for my files. So I totally understand when people hear about my business and wonder why would anyone want to do that?

Why bother with systems at all?

Some time back, I think it was when I became an “adult”, I realized that not everything we have to do must be fun. And unlike what Pinterest would have you to believe, not everything has to look like it was photographed in a magazine. Sometimes we just do things because they’re important.

That’s what systems are; they are the unsexy but important element missing in so many businesses.

The glue that holds the business together when there are staffing changes.
The plan that gives you direction when life gets hectic.
The ‘how to guide’ on running your business, so (gasp) you don’t have to run it yourself all the time.

Quite simply, systems will give you the freedom you wanted when you started your business.

And really, that’s the first step to accepting that your business needs systems: understand the balance between boring and fun. Creating your systems doesn’t have to seem like torture or a day at Disneyland, but the results can mean more fun, freedom and growth in your business.