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In today’s quick tip episode I want to dive into a topic that I’ve been hinting at a few times in recent shows.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about what I mean when I say, “Simplicity is what scales.”
I was recently auditing an Accelerator member’s business. I discovered there was a ton of unnecessary complexity in their business.
Complexity that’s holding them back from scaling their business faster.
I’m a huge fan of simplicity. Years ago, however, my business was anything but simple.
It was super complex, with different offers for different audiences. The back end of the business was a spider web of different tools connected to each other in weird ways.
Things got so much better when I simplified everything down to four key components in the business.
We scaled the business. We created more revenue and more profit. I was working the least amount of hours that I ever had, and I was the happiest I’d ever been in the business.
That’s what I want for you and your business, and it starts with simplifying the business into four different systems, which I’m going to share with you today.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The four systems of a successful business
- How to scale your business using these four systems
- Where the easiest “wins” are in your business
Links & Resources:
- 10XPRO
- DM me on Instagram
- Visit my YouTube channel
- The Art of Online Business clips
- The Art of Online Business website
- The Art of Online Business Podcast website
- Check out my Accelerator coaching program
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
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[00:00:00] Rick:
Alright. What’s up, my friends. Rick Mulready here. Welcome to episode 583 here on the show.
Today is a Friday quick tip episode. I don’t know why I always like Friday quick tips and I always do the same thing; I always say the same thing whenever that comes up.
Today, my friends, I want to dive into a topic that I’ve been kind of hinting at, or have mentioned a few times during recent episodes here.
[00:00:58]
I want to spend a few minutes talking about what I mean when I say, “Simplicity is what scales.”
I was auditing one of our members businesses recently, an Accelerator member, and this kept coming up for me: there’s so much complexity here that is unnecessary.
[00:01:22]
That complexity is holding them back from scaling their business faster.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any period of time—thank you, by the way—you know I always talk about simplicity. I’m a huge fan of simplicity because, years ago, my business was anything but simple.
[00:01:45]
It was anything but simplistic. It was super complex with different offers, different audiences. The back end of the business was a spider web of different tools connected to each other in weird ways.
When I simplified everything down to four key components in the business, which I’m going to share with you here in just a second,
[00:02:08]
that’s when things got so much better. We scaled the business. We created more revenue, more profit. I was working the least amount of hours that I ever had. I was happy, the happiest I’d ever been in the business. That’s all within the past couple of years to be, to be honest with you.
[00:02:29]
I’m on a year number eight, so it’s taken me a while to get here.
There’s some really, really key ideas here that I want to share with you. It’s really about simplifying the business into four different systems.
I talked about this from the perspective of three systems in the business a while ago, a long time ago here on the podcast.
[00:02:55]
But I wanted to kind of update this concept for you of simplifying the business into four systems. And before I break those four systems down, the foundation of your business needs to be the, your business values, right? What are the values that you stand for? And your business. So for example, one of ours is integrity, right?
[00:03:19]
And if you do not have values in your business, and I’ve done a whole episode about values, which we’ll link up in the show notes for today’s episode here, if you don’t yet have values in your business or that you operate from. That’s okay, but you really should prioritize creating those values. And somebody asked somebody recently, actually it was the day I’m recording this, somebody DME on Instagram and said, Hey, Rick, I’m just curious.
[00:03:46]
Are your values that you operate within your business the same as your personal values? And I thought that was such an interesting question. And I also thought about it. I was like, well, of course, right. Like why would I have different. Personal values that I operate from the business from, you know what I mean?
[00:04:05]
And so just as an example, integrity is the number one value. Now I’m talking right now about, from the business perspective, integrity is our number one value, right in our team, integrity, as it relate to say as a culture, not just a set of actions in our marketing. Profit is not the only lens through which we make marketing decisions.
[00:04:30]
So those are just two different examples of what integrity means to us. Right? Another value of ours is advocacy. Another value of ours is kindness, vulnerability, collaboration. And each one of those things means, you know, obviously different, you know, a different thing for each one of those, but that needs to be the foundation of your business.
[00:04:50]
As an example, another example, you know, if somebody, so for our Accelerator coaching program, this is our one offer, right. And it’s application only. If somebody even so some let’s just say somebody applies, right? And so if you apply to Accelerator, we are doing a lot of background, research on you when you apply before you even possibly make it to the next step, which the next step being, we jumped on a zoom call, right.
[00:05:26]
And one of the key factor. Is, and granted you need to be qualifying from a revenue standpoint. Right? So we work with established course creators coaches, maybe T a teacher entrepreneurs who are doing at least eight to 10 K per month in revenue from your online business. Right. So it’s, if you’re meeting that threshold right after that, it’s from what we’re able to see, do your values align with our values.
[00:05:56]
If we are able to see if we can kind of glean from our research that no, that’s not the case. We don’t move forward. Right. So that’s an example of. Going through the lens of our value of integrity, meaning in our marketing profit is not the only lens, right? Because we could say yes to everybody who applies and we get a lot of applications, but that’s certainly not the case, right.
[00:06:21]
By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about Accelerator, and applying, go to Rick mulready.com forward slash Accelerator, and you will see on that page, by the way, our values throughout that. Page. Okay. So this is not an episode on values, but my point being is that this is the foundation of your business, right?
[00:06:44]
So you can have the best systems in the world, but if they’re not going through the filter of your values, then. We don’t the way I look at it as you, you’re not creating a complete business, right? A not, you’re not creating an aligned business either. So that is number one, right? It created the values of you already do have values.
[00:07:05]
Amazing. So make sure that you’re operating the entire business through the lens of those values. Okay. So with that said, you’re simplifying the business into four systems, right? Marketing, sales, fulfillment, and operations. Those four systems. The marketing system is basically how do you attract your ideal audience?
[00:07:29]
And I’m going to break down each one of these here in just a second. The sales system is how and what do you sell to that audience that you’ve attracted through your marketing? The third system is your fulfillment system, right? What does it look like? What’s the experience. Once somebody becomes a paying customer.
[00:07:48]
Whether that is in a course that you have, whether that’s in a $9 offer, whether that is for your membership, a coaching program, whatever it is, what does that experience look like? Once they become a paying customer? And then the fourth, system is the operations, right? So this is the systems and processes for how the business efficiently runs.
[00:08:13]
Now that includes. Team, right. In addition to, you know, quote unquote your standard operating procedures and your, the tools and all that stuff. So let me quickly break down each one of these things, right. And the reason why this is so important is because again, when I was auditing. One of our members, businesses, there was so much complexity there and I was like, you know, what, if we take a step back from this and is break this down into these four systems.
[00:08:45]
Everything becomes so much simpler. There’s so much less stress and we are heading in one direction rather than in a whole bunch of different directions. Right. So from a marketing system perspective. Okay. Again, this is. How you attract your ideal audience. So you can break this down into the different channels that you use to market your business, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s a YouTube channel, whether it’s, blog where you’re writing blog posts, your social media, this could be a Facebook or Instagram ads.
[00:09:17]
This could be Google ads. This could be YouTube ads, any number of strategies that, where you’ve got, or maybe it’s organic SEO, right. All of these are amazing strategies, but we have to identify what are the best ones for us that we are going to use to market our business, to attract the audience that we want to attract.
[00:09:38]
The key thing here is who is responsible for the marketing part of the business who owns the marketing part of the business. Maybe that’s. Or if you have a team that somebody on your team who owns that who’s responsible for it. So in essence, they own a quarterly let’s just say, and then that you break that down into monthly, but they own a quarterly, for example, quality leads number.
[00:10:09]
So just super simplistic. Okay. On the marketing side, who whomever, whoever is whomever is, I don’t know that person is responsible for, you know, just, let’s say a thousand leads over the quarter. I’m just, again, just throwing the number out there, keep it super simple. A thousand leads over the quarter.
[00:10:29]
They’re responsible for attracting a thousand quality leads into the business and how they hit that is up to them. Right now, again, this might be you, you might be that person, or you might have somebody who’s responsible for your marketing and maybe you’re already doing a podcast, or maybe you’re already doing YouTube videos.
[00:10:52]
You’ve got a YouTube channel. Whatever it might be is this is where you as the CEO, if somebody on your team is heading up marketing, that person is telling you what they need so that they can be hitting. The numbers that the two of you have agreed upon. Right? And so again, they own the leads number and the traffic number, et cetera.
[00:11:20]
And they are responsible for hitting that number. Again, this is where it comes into. If you are creating a podcast or if you’re creating. whatever TikTok videos or, YouTube videos or reels or whatever it is, they’re going to tell you, this is what we need in order to achieve this goal. So within that, obviously you need a consistent lead source.
[00:11:45]
Lead magnets ads, SEO again, podcast. I just mentioned all that. Right. You’ve got to have a consistent content strategy, but again, the whoever whomever is owning marketing owns that process. Right. And maybe you have a free Facebook group, you know, something that, a lot of people are talking about for different reasons recently.
[00:12:08]
And so it’s really about, okay, what is our marketing system? Okay. These are the three channels that we focus on in our business, not 17 channels, right? These are the couple to a few channels that bring us the best types of leads into our business. And then this person. On the, on the team owns the marketing side of the business.
[00:12:34]
Now that doesn’t mean again, that that person is doing everything on the marketing side. They’re responsible for hitting the goals on the marketing side, and then there’s going to be other people maybe within the marketing team. Okay. Now that’s the marketing system, the sales system. Again, that who owns the sales system for a lot of us, that might be you, right?
[00:12:59]
You might be the owner of the sales system. This, this comes down to what is your offer or offers and how do you sell it? do, is it on evergreen? Do you have an evergreen webinar? Is it email marketing into a video series? Is it, you know, whatever it looks like is, are you launching. Who owns the sales process?
[00:13:21]
The sales system is again, how and what you sell to the audience that is being, being attractive through your market. So there’s a whole bunch of things within the sales system, which I’ll cover in a, in a separate episode, coming up here because this is a big thing that I’m seeing a lot recently too.
[00:13:42]
But again, simplicity sake, you’ve got a marketing system where you’re attracting the audience. You’ve got a sale system that is converting those people. Remember they’re human beings, the people into. You know, into their, like the transaction or you actually get to help them, they’re paying to purchase a service from you or a product.
[00:14:04]
So that is the second system, obviously that’s where the revenue is coming from. Right. The third system is that fulfillment system. So again, what is the experience? Once somebody becomes a paying customer? How are you, how is the business delivering on the promise of your offer? What, whatever that promise is, how is the business delivering on it?
[00:14:32]
Who’s ensuring that the, that the promise is being delivered on again. That might be you, but that might be someone who’s responsible for fulfillment, right? You want an owner for fulfillment, and then within that, Again, the most important thing is how is the business delivering on the promise of whatever it is that you’re saying?
[00:14:53]
Then it, you know, then it becomes things like content for either your course or your membership or your coaching program or your resources or whatever it might be. You want a, you know, an onboarding sequence, regardless of whether you have a membership or a course or whatever. Again, what is the experience like once somebody gives you their credit card information.
[00:15:16]
Okay. and then. What is the support? The member support look like, meaning do your members, do your customers, do your students have a very easy way to get in touch, to get help? Whether that’s technical support or questions? I lost my login or whatever it might be. Do they, is it very easy for them to do that?
[00:15:40]
And fulfillment having a fulfillment system in your business. This is where the easiest wins are, in my opinion. Right? Look, you get results for, for your existing members or your existing students. You are not going to have any issues, increasing revenue and profit because you’re getting amazing results for the people that.
[00:16:03]
Are in your programs or buying your resources or that you are coaching. If they’re getting amazing results, they’re going to start talking and you will never have issues increasing revenue while increasing profit focus on getting your existing students members, et cetera, results. And the rest, honestly, I know this sounds kind of cliche, but the rest take kind of takes care of itself.
[00:16:31]
Okay. So that’s the third system, the fulfillment system, and the fourth system is operations. Right? And so this comes down to things like, what are the, what are the fewest best in class solutions? For supporting the three systems that we just went through for supporting your marketing, your sales and fulfillment, right.
[00:16:56]
What are the systems and processes for supporting, each of these systems from a actual systems and processes standpoint, right? Like SLPs, which tools are you using, et cetera? You know, just as an example, I’ve talked about 10 X. On the podcast, quite a bit before I’m going to be talking more about it coming up for me, this is the best in class solution for creating sales funnels for.
[00:17:26]
Hosting my courses, my trainings, has an affiliate center in there. I can create like one click funnels in there. I can create landing pages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like for me, that’s the best in class solution that provides the most efficient and simplest way to achieve all those important things.
[00:17:49]
In the business, by the way, if you want to check that out, it’s Rick mulready.com forward slash 10 X pro. and you can get, I think it’s like a dollar for 30 days or something trial. It’s great. I love it. but anyway, what are the fewest best in class solutions for supporting your marketing sales and fulfillment?
[00:18:05]
Also, what are the systems and processes for supporting those systems? Included in that is your team. You want your team focused on generating ROI in the business, whether that’s revenue or whether that’s time.
So, because again, I talked about it here on the show, ROI, most people think, “Oh, return on investment being money.”
[00:18:28]
Absolutely. But that also could be buying back your time and focusing. You want to make sure that your team is focused on the right things in the business.
So, when you step back from the business, understanding that you’ve got these four systems, and when you start having five different offers and three different audiences that you need to be speaking to at all times in your business, because one offer that you have speaks to this audience and one offer over here speaks to this audience, which is exactly what I used to do.
[00:19:03]
That is unnecessary complexity. The more laser-focussed you can get on the niche that you serve and how specifically you solve their problems, boom. Your business becomes that much easier. And that my friend is what’s going to scale.
So, look at your business. Do you have these four systems set up in your business?
[00:19:27]
If you don’t, I really want to encourage you to look at your marketing system. What is your sales system? Fulfillment operation: who is responsible in your business for each one of these systems? When I say responsible, they own the results. That’s hat’s most important about this.
[00:19:45]
Whomever is owning each of these systems. Again, you might be owning three of them. Somebody else owns another one. That’s fine. But ultimately we would want to get this where you’re overseeing everything. You have people on your team who are owning each one of these systems, and owning meaning they’re owning the results for each.
[00:20:05]
This, my friend, is exactly how you simplify your business and scale your business really, really quickly.
So, there you have it, my friends. Thank you, as always, for tuning in today. I appreciate you. I’ll see you right back here for next episode here in the Art of Online Business podcast.
