Ep 179: How & Why To Remove Yourself From Your Business Entirely with David Jenyns

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

Most people's businesses are broken, and they don't even know it. Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the buying online businesses podcast and in this episode, I'm speaking with David Jenyns and David in 2016, successfully systemized himself out of his business, one of Australia's most trusted digital agencies, Melbourne, SEO. Now through this process, he became a systems devotee – founding systemHUB & SYSTEMology. Today, his mission is to free all business owners worldwide from the daily operations of running their business.

In this podcast episode, David, I speak about if your business actually relies on you for any task, how it's actually broken, and why it's broken. We will talk about what comes first creating the system and hiring the staff to run the system or hiring someone who brings the system into your business. And when to hire each of those, you know, hiring a GM hiring somebody who's a support staff, and what roles for we will talk about, we'll talk about what sort of roles should you hire for in the lifecycle of growing your business from, support staff, admin staff to department heads in marketing, sales, operations, HR and finance.

We always talk about how to hire a CEO, and the risks of hiring a CEO and the risks of not hiring a CEO, which can cause your business to be broken at some stages. Now, what are some of the things that get in the way of you hiring right? This is what David and I talk about mindset, sometimes working in your business too long, where you have conditioned yourself into your business or have a conditioned mindset around certain tasks and the way certain things may be done.

David wanted to speak about all these things that can actually stop your business, from scaling from not hiring and having the right systems and people in the right places. Now this is such a refreshing podcast episode on scaling your business around systems, you're absolutely going to love it. Let's dive in.

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David, welcome back to the Buying Online Businesses podcast.

David Jenyns (2:56)

Hey, Jaryd, I'm looking forward to this. It's been a long time since we've had a deep dive catch up hasn't it?

Jaryd Krause (3:01)

I'm looking forward to catching up off air as well. But for those of you who are listening, David came on episode number 26. So, when I think before this podcast even went to video, David. I'm pretty certain we went to video around like 30-40, we were talking about systemizing your business for better life, how to have a bit more time. And then you came back on episode number 76. And we talked about how to never let your website business turn into a job.

And in this podcast episode, we want to cover how to remove yourself from your business entirely. And there's two reasons for most people want to do this is so they can exit the business and not have personal brand dependency, or the reason is they want to maybe they've just had children or they're about to have children. Like my sister, she's like, I'm just going as hard as I can in all these things in my business. So, she can free up at a time, which is really cool. So, I'll probably have some questions based on some of what she's doing.

But if somebody's thinking about David how to remove themselves from their business, like what are some of the first things they need to be thinking about? What are some of the first questions they should get answers too.

David Jenyns (4:07)

The first thing is to really get committed to the idea. Like I think a lot of people though, when you read books, like the E-Myth and scaling-up and Built to Sell, like, I think a lot of business owners are sold on the idea of systems. So, you just want to make sure you reach that point where you go, Hey, this is what I want to do. And then commit to it and lean into it because it won't happen by accident. It does take consistent work to build a systems culture amongst your team.

And where you start is probably the most important thing like really applying the 80 20 thinking about the 20% of the systems that deliver the 80% of like the bulk of the result for the work that you're doing, and just focusing in on that. So maybe you start off by thinking about a core product or service and you think about a dream client that you're selling that core product or service to and you just look at optimizing that experience and thinking, can you remove yourself from the delivery of that core product or service?

And if you start there, you kind of start to help to answer the question, Well, where do I start, because that's where most people get stuck, they kind of go, wow, there's hundreds of systems I could be creating. In my business, I could be systemizing, all different aspects, recruiting and onboarding and management and finance. And like, there's just a little bit of that overwhelm comes in.

So, but if you can strip a lot of that away, get a core quiet, that you're servicing and a core product or service, just start there and identify the critical 10 to 15 systems in that process, and focus on that solely until it's complete, that's going to yield you infinitely better results than kind of chopping and changing and you're trying to systemize a little bit of everything.

Jaryd Krause (5:56)

Yeah. And so complete looks like you're not having to touch that part of the business. Is that right?

David Jenyns (6:02)

Yeah, look, it's definitely an iterative process, I think, like part of the process to start with, I say, will just capture what you're currently doing, not what you would like to be doing. And you've got some team members around you, you might already have someone who handles an incoming inquiry. Now, they might not have happened to do it world class, or exactly the way that you would like to have it done.

And you've got plans on how you'd like to improve it, but they're doing a good enough job. Well, let's just capture what they're currently doing. And consider that version number one, you just want to get a version number one of all of these systems in place, so that you have almost like a minimum viable set of systems in place. And then over time, you kind of build upon it from there. And that's probably the biggest thing that you really need to focus on.

Because once you've got version number one down, it makes it much easier to plug someone else in and removes any sort of key person dependency, and makes sure that, you know, if you're not available to do one of the steps, or one of your key team members are unavailable to do the steps, you've still got a version one of a system that you can give to someone who can try and deliver it or get it delivered to a reasonable standard.

And that's probably the key getting, removing any sort of dependency that way, and then constantly improving like, you get a new team member on board, and they do the system and they have some questions and you go, Oh, well, let's incorporate that into the system. Okay, well, that system is now version too. And each time those questions come in, and that feedback loop happens, you make that system stronger, and stronger and stronger, to the point at which you reach the point where it's really easy to plug people in.

Jaryd Krause (7:49)

I think having a minimal viable set of systems is important that people understand because it's not going to be perfect. And the system is like how you deliver and how you onboard and how you do all these different parts of the business is going to change anyway. If somebody's thinking about right, one product or one part of the one part of the business, and operations, let's get that done, if they were going to move from Once that's complete, where would you look at next? Would you look at onboarding your customer? Client Management?

David Jenyns (8:19)

So, the very first thing we do, off course this exercise we call the critical client flow. And it's about capturing the linear journey that that dream client goes through. So, it touches on a few different departments, you go, how do I grab the attention of that target audience? How do I handle the incoming inquiry? How do I sell that prospect? How do I onboard them into the business? How do I deliver that core product or service? And then how do I get them to come back? That's where you start.

And you get version one of that down? Once you get through that? And then you think, Okay, well, what happens next, depending on what problems are going on in your business, sometimes that can pull your attention to certain parts of the business. But generally speaking, HR is a great next place to start, which is the recruitment and the onboarding of staff, mainly just because that sets the tone for any new team member that joins you. And you'll find the most challenges that you have the biggest resistance to this idea of introducing a systems culture comes from your existing staff.

But if you get the right recruitment and onboarding process for all new staff, there's zero resistance. They just say, Oh, this is how we've always done things. And this is just the way that we do things here. So, getting that piece right is really important. And oftentimes the step after that can happen at the same time again, depends on what's going on in the business, oftentimes finances another area that you might want to pick out some key systems, certain things have to happen. You've got to be paying bills, you've got to be ensuring invoices go out and you've got follow up process to make sure those get paid and you've got tax obligations and wages.

Is there's a handful of systems like, again, if we apply the 8020 to the finance department, there's probably 10 systems in the finance department that are mission critical, otherwise your whole business falls apart. And focusing on those next is a great place to go.

Jaryd Krause (10:17)

Okay, great. And when somebody thinks about, this is kind of like a chicken and egg question, what comes first? Do you create the system for and then hire people to run the system? Or do you hire the people who bring the system in and create the system? And I guess, a mark could be wrong, maybe it's dependent on the type of job? Yeah, type of task? And if it is, what sort of roles would you be hiring for? And then what sort of system like, what sort of roles would you be creating system for first?

David Jenyns (10:56)

Yeah, good question. And it's, nothing really happens in a vacuum. And there are a lot of things that are going on. So, there can be a lot of different variables that you need to kind of consider. So, generally speaking, if you've already got a little bit of a team around you, and you're already getting a little bit of traction, you've already got product to market fit, then working with your existing team and capturing what you're currently doing is generally the best place to start.

Like think of that as version number one. And there are certain systems that I suggest you do get into place, particularly the recruiting and onboarding, again, that just sets the tone for everything. Beyond that, though, if you've got certain departments, so let's say, your sales department, you, you want to build out your sales department, you don't yet really have many sales systems and processes in place. And you may or may not be as the business owner, the best person to even develop those. So, finding the right person to come into that space, and then help to develop them. As long as you've got a bit of a framework, hey, we're a system driven organization.

And we save all of our best practice systems here. And we use this project management platform, and you have a little bit of a framework just for the way that the business operates and where things are stored, then I think getting in the right team member, to then help you build out those systems and processes is probably the way to go. If you have zero, like skills, skills, or systems in place in that area, there are going to be a bunch of things like oftentimes, if you've got an established business, and you've already kind of got a little bit of momentum, your businesses already kind of working.

So, all that we're trying to do is capture what is currently working, and then make it work independent of any key team member. And that's probably the biggest key is just because you don't systemize it doesn't mean it's going to magically stop happening. Like there are certain parts of your business that even if you don't have a process written down, someone is still answering the phone call when it comes in. So yeah, it's the 80 20. And thinking about where do you start with systems, it's really just about identifying the critical ones.

And they're usually the, once you get them documented the first tasks that new team members learn, and it's a great way for them to cut their teeth and learn about your business, and then get into the mix. And then over time, they'll skill up and they'll start to get good at what they do. And then they can start handle the exceptions of things that fall outside of the systems and the one-off tasks and the things that don't quite fit into those documented processes. But yet, I think getting great team members in and then having a process to almost like extract out of their brain, what it is that they're doing is a critical piece here.

Jaryd Krause (13:47)

Yeah, I want to come back to getting great team members in because is going to be a part of this, right? I'm sure you've got experience in that. But when it comes to the time, like how do we get another person for this task and make it a separate task or a separate role. For example, you've hired one person or you got one person for a particular job. And then you create a system because that other job needs to be done.

And then they are running sort of two roles. But they were hired for like, say, customer communications or something like that. customer management, and then they're doing other stuff. When do you go Alright, let's draw the line in the sand and you just do this role I'm going to hire for another role. How do you do that.

David Jenyns (14:33)

As you're growing, like, the smaller you are, the more hats every team member is going to have to wear. Because there's a certain amount of work that needs to be done. And it's all hands-on deck whenever there's a problem or an issue or clients coming on board or whatever it might be. But as you start to grow, one of the first things that you start to do is you carve off areas of responsibility based on department. So, you start to go oh, let's get a person who becomes this department head or potentially could be groomed into being a department head, whether that's sales, marketing, HR Finance, like each one of those, ultimately, you want to have a department head.

And then team members that sit underneath them, generally speaking, like when you start off, and if you're small, your name might sit in all of those boxes. But then over time, you start to think, Oh, well, I've got this assistant here, well, maybe they can handle the customer service department. And then maybe over time, maybe they do sit across a couple of different departments. But then once they're at capacity, and you think, Hey, I could get a team member in here, either full time or part time that could then become that department head, then that's when you might start to break those roles and split it and get someone because that's the key when a lot of people get stuck.

And it's that transition from it's just you and it's small, or you got a couple of freelancers that you work with, to building a little bit of a team. Oftentimes, when they first when you first get started, it's all about task transference. And you're, you're assigning a task to someone and your very task driven, that a lot of business owners, they get stuck in that space there, the way to actually bridge through it is then to actually assign out responsibilities, and then start to go all the marketing department is now your responsibility. That doesn't mean you take the eye off the ball, and then you know, you don't help them or you don't provide any sort of insight or direction, but you kind of want them to step up and then own that particular department.

So that that switch, right there is a real challenging one for a lot of small business owners, but yet absolutely critical. If you want to get to a point where you can step out of the day to day operations, someone else needs to take responsibility. It starts with department heads. And then longer term, you might even plug in an operations manager, who basically sits across all of the departments, and the department’s report to the operations manager and the operations manager reports to you as the business owner. So, it's a little bit of like this, you know, a bit of a chess game, and you're moving pieces around on the board and getting people into the right places.

Jaryd Krause (17:15)

Yeah, I think it's scary for a lot of people, this is the scariest part, maybe they've built their business themselves, and it's their baby, and they have to start handing out responsibility. I think that's one of the biggest things that most people I've found that need to overcome, which I've helped people move through some of that to making hires.

But I'd love to hear how, you know, what are some other things that hold business owners back, maybe two or three things that you said, it's a mistake to try and keep them just doing tasks and not give them responsibility? What are some other mistakes that some business owners may make there?

David Jenyns (17:52)

Speaking to that point, one thing I'll say to a business owner is, if your business is so dependent on you, or any other one specific person, and it remains that way, for a long time, then your business is broken, like I try and use that as a piece, I want them to think if it's got that level of dependency, there is a problem here, because then that means if something happens to that person, whether it's you or the staff member, no one knows how to fill that gap, or it gets filled really, really messy.

And also, that person can't have a holiday, take a break off, attend to a family member who's got COVID, because they need to stick on and doing their work. So, definitely getting that that mindset is really, really, really critical. And if you understand that your business is broken, then you have to persist at it until you get it. And yes, it's hard. Yes, passing on responsibility. But if you keep coming back to this idea, if you don't do it, then it's broken, then it puts you in this double bind, you're now in a place where you have to fix it.

And there are other ways what most people do. And one of the common things are people have a picture in their head of the way they think something is and they haven't necessarily stress tested it. And it's not until they actually challenge that thought to determine whether or not that assumption was true or not. So, for example, people in their head, they think when you think of business systems, sometimes people think of, McDonald's, that's the poster child of business systemization or subway or Amazon or something like that, where they've got all of these systems and processes in place.

And then as the small business, they look at that business and they say, ah, that the systems should look like this. And then but the thing is, that is the end product of their years and years and years of hard work in building a system driven culture. But that's not where they got started. So, you got to make sure that you think about where did they get started and it's always a lot more raw than you appreciate and expect. And that's why we talked about this idea of version one. Just really rough, ugly system down. It's better than no system.

Jaryd Krause (20:08)

It's kind of like when somebody has a goal, like say their goal is to make money online, they see all these people that are already doing it. And they're like, I need to do that. It's so overwhelming to think about how like, how do I just get there? Like that you can't just have that's like you said, that's the end result? Well, yeah, what do you come back to? Where do you start?

David Jenyns (20:32)

It's funny, I use the analogy sometimes, like, it would be the equivalent of me thinking that I could run 100 meters in however many seconds and complete compete at the Olympic level with against people who train their whole lives have an amazing diet and regime, I've been training doing this for the last however many years and here I am, couch potato sitting behind a screen, who probably doesn't do enough exercise or eat right to be able to compete at that level be silly for me to think I need to compete at an Olympic level standards.

If I want to get to an Olympic level standard, I have to go back in time to where those athletes began. And start off with slow training and working up and building the right routines. And it's the same in business. So, it's, you have to kind of go back at the fundamentals though, like core business systems are at the core of it. That's why systems are so exciting to me, because I've fallen in love with the result of what systems bring. And I don't love documentation, like writing systems and processes. And like that doesn't excite me.

I actively seek to avoid it when I can, because it's not my thing. And that's not what really, I get excited by, but I've, I know what they bring to the business. So, I've started to look for the team members who can complement where I'm weak, and the team members that do enjoy that systems and processes, and plug them into this space. Because I feel like we call them systems champions, every business, like we talked about the different roles and departments in business, I feel like it that's a real neglected one, a systems champion.

And if you don't enjoy doing it, you really need someone who takes responsibility for capturing best practice with inside your organization. And doing the documentation or capturing those recordings and making it so that the team can easily follow it.

Jaryd Krause (22:29)

Like when you were working, move into hiring now. Like when you are going to hire you want to like obviously try and find somebody that enjoys that part of the business, but doesn't want to be like, oh, yeah, I want to get on a sales call and sell the product. So, when it comes to hiring, obviously, if you're going to be hiring department heads, you're going to be looking for a full-time role.

But if you're looking for an Assistant, you're going to be going to, you know, up work and things like that. When do you know that, you've got too many assistants, and you need to hire somebody that's going to take over the responsibility of managing that department with those assistants?

David Jenyns (23:12)

Yeah, look, the easiest way to do it. Like I mean, there's a couple different ways you can approach it. One is it is nice to have someone upfront your first hire in a department that you could imagine grooming into some sort of team leader role, it's not always the case. But if they come on board, oftentimes, they're the first hire, they learn the ins and outs, they watch things grow and evolve.

And it makes it easier when new team members come on board that they'd get plugged in underneath them. And the systems and processes and tasks are transferred down to lower cost team members so that that person can be elevated and work on higher value tasks. So that's one way to go. The other way to go?

Jaryd Krause (23:56)

Obviously, that's the preferred way sometimes?

David Jenyns (23:59)

I mean, the preferred way, if money was no object, the preferred way is to just hire a gun, and you go, you will be a department head, I'm going to hire you early. And I want you to come in and build out all the systems and processes and plugged the team underneath you. And that person has already done it before. So really all they're doing is replicating the picture that they have in their mind.

But inside your business, yes, that's the preferred, but oftentimes in small business, you're limited by resources and how much you can invest in recruiting that person might be outside of your reach. And then that's when you might do the option of working with someone growing them over time and then having them grow team members underneath them.

But it's Yeah, so depending on where you're at, and the funding that you've got, whether or not you're plugged that person in, and it's the same with someone like even the CEO role you can go out it would be great to hire, you know, a multi six figure CEO to come in and run your operations and Have you completely step out, but a lot of business owners can't do that it involves a huge amount of trust, as well, because you're kind of really passing those reins.

Another way to do it is you recruit from within, and you have your team as they start to grow, and they get elevated up, and they kind of earn that right amongst, the respect and the love of the team as well, by kind of working their way into that position, because there are some risks. But I mean, if you had the budget, and you did it that way, you can also shortcut it. So, it just depends.

Jaryd Krause (25:32)

Yeah, I can see the risks of hiring a CEO that comes in with their protocols, and it not gelling with the team, and then being a risk there. And then also the risk of hiring them and not knowing that they're going to get results.

But then again, there's you still got the risk of somebody who's the department head in marketing that everybody loves, and you can head up operations and marketing and then move into the CEO role. And they're not the best suited for that particular task, right?

David Jenyns (26:09)

Yeah, that happens a bit when you see that and things like, even with in the sales department, and they have sales, team members that might be great at sales, and you can go, I'm going to move them up to be our sales manager, but they're actually rubbish at being a sales manager role, they were better off down here. And that's quite a common thing, let alone at the top level for the operations person as well.

. And when I think about organically what happens with small business, and it starts off with the business owner, oftentimes it's the business owners first, then they might plug some team members around them different assistants, generally, they can grow that up to somewhere between probably about seven to 10, team members, before the wheels start to fall off. Because these, effectively the business owner is the operations manager, and each of those team members that they hire almost like suppose little department heads reporting back into that person, then you get to the point where the business owner is so busy trying to keep everybody busy and delegating out tasks, that that's the bit you start to transfer to that thing where I was saying about roles.

And then you might have sections, exercise ability, yeah, we're kind of break away, and then you're elevating someone up, then you start to build little team members underneath each of the different departments. And then depending on where you're at, , ideally, between seven, not more than 10 team members per like, manager, you don't want to go much more than about that for someone to have to supervise. Because once you do, that, they just don't have enough time in the day to do that plus actually get some of their own work done as well.

Jaryd Krause (27:45)

I've noticed that in my business where I try to not work more than 20 to 25 hours a week. And oftentimes I will blow it out of it. But there's and the reason being is because, somebody's like I need, you know, what do I do here? Or how do I get this done?

Or can you check this because that's my responsibility as the as the main owner, whereas, so that's when you start to see, I guess, I need to get another support person for the person that's coming to me for the responsibility of that task. Give them a support person, too. And then give them a support person and then give them assume responsibility of that department. Is that how you would do it?

David Jenyns (28:31)

Yeah, look, depending on without going into super detail on exactly where you're at. The other piece, maybe also the operations person, it's the person that sticks in between you and the team coming directly to you like, there's a period where at the start, they're always all coming to you, then you can plug someone else in between, and then what the someone else the operations person will sometimes do will then also put in their department heads to put them in between the rest of all of the team members that sit underneath a department.

So, it kind of just depends because the again, the operations manager is a very challenging role to recruit for, and just depends on where you're at. Sometimes if it's obvious to you, you might go yet I moved that person into that position. And now they're going to stop the people coming directly to me, sometimes you might not have that, in which case you do exactly what you said, which is then you start to go well, how do I plug some more team members underneath the department and have one of them as a department head who can basically field as much of the questions as they can and they only come to you with the ones that the department head can't respond to.

Jaryd Krause (29:48)

Yeah, got it. But would you say the ideal again would be if budget wasn't or money wasn't a thing? Find an awesome Operations Manager for that role.

David Jenyns (30:00)

As always, at some point in time, like for a business to not depend on you, someone needs to take responsibility. And you can have department heads that take responsibility for their department. But you also need someone who stands in for you when you're not available. And it's that person that the back will stop with you, with them prior to it to get into you.

So, if you need to take some time out or have time off, or whatever, everything gets routed to them, and you have to support them, and give them the right frameworks on hey, here's how I make decisions. He's, and then you run alongside them for a little while, watch them make decisions and determine are we in alignment here? Are you doing what I would have done if I was in those shoes, and that, that's that transition period.

And then you obviously, you got to loosen the grip, at the start, you hold tight, but, and you got to loosen the grip, because if you hold the grip too tight, and then you never let go, you end up micromanaging that person. And you'll either scare them off, because they won't necessarily want to work under those conditions or, or you will have trained them that you're just a micromanager. And you're never going to be able to step away anyway. Because your kind of putting the same your own stuff.

Jaryd Krause (31:17)

Exactly. Remove your stuff out of the way to be. That's a big thing. That's a huge, huge thing. I think that's the more I do deep inner work on myself that the better my business can perform the better everybody else performs like on the bottleneck, and it's funny to think that even if you hire, you can still be the bottleneck.

David Jenyns (31:40)

Yeah, Because you've got all of these habits. And it's hard. It's a classic case, and we all hear it where what gets you to here won't get you necessarily to their where that is where it is that you're going. Yeah, and all of the habits typically that grow your business to a certain size, have actually got you a tremendous amount of success, which reinforce and strengthen them. And then that's what makes it so hard.

Because certain habits have meant that you're successful yet, then that becomes the habit that micromanaging and looking over everything and making sure that things are delivered to a certain standard has meant that all of your clients love you. And that's why they refer friends and family and why you have such a great output. So, in your head, the person listening to this is thinking, Yeah, but that's, I've got to do that, because that's what got me the success.

And then it makes it really hard to kind of break that habit and then realize, yeah, but, if my business depends on me, or has key person dependency, it's actually broken. And you have to keep coming back to that thought.

Jaryd Krause (32:44)

Yeah, it's something that I battle with, as well as like, communication between myself and clients and knowing I want to make sure they get the best results. And I know that I'm the guy for the job. And then wanting to find somebody, I guess it just takes time and training to be able to make sure you can somebody to build them up to that level, right.

David Jenyns (33:03)

This is a nice little thing for you to think about. And we go back to what we talked about earlier, where identify in your product line, product or service, a primary dream client that you want to serve and a primary product or service, and work on Systemising that to the point that it can be delivered without key person dependency. Now, what does that mean? That means you might have, let's say that your design business, and you can do a bunch of things, and you're a lead designer, and okay, well, the logo, we might systemize down to a point where we can deliver beautiful logos.

And we've got a process for that. But anytime that someone comes for a request outside of that, which is the custom style guide with logos and the full design makeover, great, well, maybe that does fall into your lap at that point in time at which you can do that. But you want to break away at least one piece of the business just to start with get that to actually but let it be delivered without you or the business owner without any key person dependency that then becomes the seed of what is possible and what it can grow into.

And sometimes, sometimes you even see businesses like it's almost like mental jujitsu that you play with yourself with as the business owner, because then you can justify in your head that you're like, oh, I'm not going to be turning away work. But it can get to the point where you systemize that bit so well that you might even reach the point that you go, imagine if my whole business was actually just that, and I turned away all of the custom work, and we just did that piece that sometimes can happen.

But initially I just say no be open to the possibility you can still take the custom work because a lot of business owners have, they struggle with turning away something if it does, you know, they think I'm turning away money, like I don't want to, but the ideal scenario is very clear target audience, very clear a product or service that solves a very specific problem. And you only do that and you've got all the systems and processes are around doing that without key person dependency.

Jaryd Krause (35:10)

I think that's beautifully said the planting the seed and then watering it and then the mental jujitsu and seeing that this little part that's been systemized, it can be done in other parts of the business, which helps you break the mold of your conditioning that you've done, where you've conditioned yourself in your business to give out more tasks and automate and give responsibility.

David Jenyns (35:34)

The way that I did this for me, because I went through this exact thing you're talking about, I owned a digital agency, Melbourne, SEO? No, we talked about it in one of the earlier episodes. And I worked in that business for about 10 years too long, because I thought my agency was different, that we were a creative agency, and you can't systemize what we were doing, right? It's Google was always updating its algorithms, things were changing.

And we're a creative agency, my team's not gonna follow systems and processes. So, I concluded that yes, you can systemize all business, except for mine. This one right now, the digital agency, and I got stuck in it for 10 years. And it wasn't until we broke out, we had a separate video production business. And I remember going on a shoot now I'm not a videographer, I don't know how to shoot, I don't know how to edit. And I still don't know how to shoot and edit. But we started up a video business, and I went on a shoot with my videographer.

And I remember at the time for the drive to this shoot, he asked a bunch of questions in the car things like, oh, did I pack the second battery? Did I email the client to let them know that they shouldn't wear chequered shirts, because it looks rubbish on camera? Did we email them the script beforehand. And we spent the entire journey of him thinking about all of these things that should have just been handled. And then afterwards, I said, Oh, well, let's create a system and get a system in place where you have a checklist of everything that gets handled prior to you going out on a shoot.

Now, because I wasn't a videographer, that was really easy for me to do objectively and step back actively. And I remember six months later, we went on another shoot. And I remember that experience was completely different, where he, the car ride we talked about or how we get the best performance out of the people what sort of lighting he wanted to use to make sure everything looked awesome, and how long he wanted the video to be and what lines were important. And it was his attention was all on the creative stuff.

As opposed to did I bring the second battery, which should have just been handled. And in that moment, I went, this is a super creative business. It's a video production business. Now I can see the importance that systems play inside this business in a very creative business. And I took that snapshot. And then I started to apply it into Melbourne SEO. And I had the same experience that you were talking about with your sister, we found out we were pregnant.

And I thought, hey, I don't want to be too busy to be there as my kids grow up. And that was like, I know it can be done. I've seen it happen in this business over here. And I've now got a deadline to make it happen. And I will and I did. And that was a big part of that.

Jaryd Krause (38:24)

Congrats. That's awesome. I think it's so good to think about that. You removing yourself, or having those checklists. And removing yourself allows you to not like frees you out from the operations and frees you up from managing people and tasks and stuff like that. So, then they have the capacity as well on like, how do you get better lighting? How do you get better performance for everybody, every one of your clients? And I think that's what we should.

That's what we start our business for. Right is to serve and then we can get bogged down in the stuff and then we need to work out how can we get out of the staff to ensure we serve on a higher level? So, I think we've got to wrap it up there. David? Tell us where can people find out more about you? This book? If you guys didn't see the previous episode, episode number 76 on SYSTEMology, which is David's book, awesome book. When did this go live? When did you publish this?

David Jenyns (39:19)

We were coming up to you. It's probably about a year and a half, two years old now. Because I was chatting with you our first episode was probably just around the launch of the book. So, it's got to be Yeah, a couple of years now. Okay. See, at least yeah. So, it rolls around really quickly.

I mean, if you hit over, if you're listening to this, you might be an audio person, you can head over to Audible and SYSTEMology on Audible and or you can go to Amazon, grab a copy of the book there or you can head to systemology.com which is our website. There's links to the YouTube channel and podcast and book and all that sort of stuff. Lots of help on there, but I feel like the books the best place to start it's like 20 bucks and pretty much outlines out methodology in full.

Jaryd Krause (40:01)

There's a great book guys go check out the book SYSTEMology and there'll be links to all that in the show notes. David thank you so much for coming on for those of you are listening thank you for listening if you know anybody that has a business share this podcast episode with them it's highly valuable thanks guys.