Video 1: getting started, pg 1 of 7 In video one, we re going to set the stage by walking you through the most basic Work the System principles, as well as some important nuances. We ll spend some time orienting you through the program so you know exactly what to expect and have a clear picture of what s coming up. We ll do a few exercises to establish where you are right now regarding the number of hours you work and the kind of income you earn. And we re also going to ask you to create some aspirational goals and begin the process of designing your brand new life and business. Remember, there is some work to do here, so you re going to need to roll your sleeves up. But, if you re determined to break out of your current situation and live the make-more-work-less lifestyle, you really couldn t be in a better place than where you are now. So without further ado, Sam, it s over to you. 00:49 Thanks Mike. Welcome to the main part of the program. This is about getting what you want in your life, about making more money and working fewer hours. That s what we all want, right? Control is a good thing and directly tied to happiness. And we want you to take control. More on this later. 01:12 What we re not doing here is promoting a life of laziness, but simply a life where you get to choose exactly how you want to spend your time. Most people who join the Academy will be doers and contributors. So we just wanted to make that point clear at the outset. 01:28 We do this by discovering a new way of looking at things. We call this vantage point the systems mindset. Don t let yourself get overwhelmed, there s no need. This will be the most incredibly good investment of your personal time that you ve made in a long-long time. Go slow and work through these videos at your own pace, and make sure you do it in a place where you are fully focused and without distractions. As you begin to get to work, the clarity will begin to unfold faster than you may think, but go slow. Absorb the nuances along with the fundamentals. And most of all, see how the details align with the systems mindset, and trust the process! 01:10
Video 1: getting started, pg 2 of 7 The program is designed for both business owners who do have staff, and that can be either in-house staff or outsourced, and for those who don t. We will occasionally make references where we suggest that the business owner gets his or her managers or staff to do certain things. We ll assume that if you have no managers or staff you ll need to perform these actions yourself. 02:31 If you have staff, there are four types of people; you, your Replacement - and we ll speak about that person in a moment, management, and staff. 02:41 And for those of you one-man-band business owners who have no staff, remember that you re building a framework which will allow you to take on staff in the not too distant future. By spending time documenting the procedures of your business it will make the process of bringing on your first staff members a lot smoother. If you do have managers in your business, you need to appoint somebody to become your Replacement. Now, that s replacement with a capital R. This person will be key to helping you make more money and work fewer hours. If you don t have such a person in your organization and it s vital that they are a highly trusted and high caliber individual, then you need to be working towards hiring someone in at some stage. Now, you will have the ability to improve efficiencies dramatically, as well as decrease your work week without the need for a replacement. But, for those of you who wish ultimately to master the Work the System Method you need to have the confidence to know that all the knowledge in your head has been transferred to one key individual within your business. And remember too that there are lots of people who ve started implementing the Work the System method when they were working 80, 90, and even 100 hour work weeks. So don t kid yourself that your situation is different. Have confidence. Trust us here. To get ahead you ll need to knuckle down at least for a short period of time. We re going to talk too about our real lives throughout the series. We ll be serious about what we re telling you, but we ll also keep it light at times. We ll be working in part from notes, and in part we ll be speaking freeform. Parts will be polished, and other parts will be loose and light. Most of the videos are accompanied with a guide sheet and a do-it-now sheet. The guide sheet contains a reminder of the key points from within each video. And the do-it-now sheets are where you will carry out various exercises. For the most part the exercises are very short, but they are important. When you see the do-it-now icon come up on the screen this indicates that you should pause the video and complete the prescribed task, and you just need to do it. We will also occasionally make reference to template documents during the videos. These can all be found in the template section of the site. We ll give you timeframes for completing tasks, or at the very least, we ll give you guidelines.
Video 1: getting started, pg 3 of 7 05:16 Each of the videos also has a transcription attached if you should wish to read through the text versions. Feel free to share the program with your managers and key members of your staff. It s a good idea to be a few videos ahead so that you are the first to digest the content. We recommend an open style of management and to include your key people in the program so that you are all working towards the same end. We ll talk to the business owner or leader for the majority of the video series., but there will be specific parts where we talk to managers and key members of your team. The economy is up and down as we create these videos and very likely could be in bad shape at the point you watch these videos. Your competitive advantage will be your ability to run a smoother, tighter, and more efficient, and therefore a more profitable operation than your competitors. Try this on for size, Freedom is a combination of lots of personal time, and lots of money. I love talking about this stuff. It s in my belly, it s in my heart, and it s in my head. And this is universal; it affects everything every minute. Right now, please be willing to drop the follow your bliss and the money will appear idiom. You want more control than that. And we ll talk more about this later. All I m asking you to do is to be disciplined for the next 30 to 90 days, when you will have carved out a lot more time for yourself to pursue whatever it is that constitutes your bliss. Here s an incredibly important point about your success and getting what you want out of life. You must generic term with your beliefs. You must walk your talk. The entire Work the System methodology is based on this alignment. Why? It has to do with being real with yourself, yes, but mechanically it s about not having internal, and therefore, external conflict. Reduce conflict and increase efficiency! So, it s essential that you stop theorizing and start doing. If the idea of doing feels painful, get started and you ll quickly see how simple and powerful the process is and how it begins to energize you in a way you may not have ever experienced before. Just do it! Yes, there are some nutshell Work the System principles. I ll briefly review them in the first few video segments. Trust that we ll come back to them and, in my usual style, beat them to death as we move through the program. You want to learn, right? In that context repetition is a very good thing. It could almost be a principle, and I make no apology for it. 07:54 And as Sam says, the Work The System Academy is about doing a small number of things really-really well and really-really thoroughly. Nothing complicated, but Sam will end up repeating himself for purely practical purposes, and I ll also end up repeating some of what Sam says to drive certain points home. But the point
Video 1: getting started, pg 4 of 7 08:19 here is you re going to get better results the more we re able to drive the points home. This is a framework for your business and your life. Many lives have little framework. Most small businesses don t have any. This may sound dull, but success lies in understanding the individual steps which bring out your desired outcomes. By giving you a bulletproof framework we give you a structure to take care of the essentials in your life and business and leave more time for fun and spontaneity, then 99 percent of other business owners will ever get to enjoy. 80 percent of small businesses fail in any five-year period. Most businesses struggle and are in some degree of chaos. The question is, how come? And the answer to that question is very simple. We ll get to it. We re going to be showing you how to isolate and then document the systems of your business as this is the key to getting control. We ll show you how to use the business documentation software to manage your documentation. And we ll also show you a separate filing system if you have chosen not to use the business documentation software for some reason. We will use the word office in the video as a generic term. You may or may not work in an actual office. And if you don t, simply substitute your own place of work. Work the System principle # 1 and it s number one for a reason, and here it is the simplest solution is invariably the correct solution. Work the System principle # 2 99.9 percent of everything works just fine. Believe me; I ll convince you this is true. And we ll get to that in a little bit. Work the System principle # 3 the systems mindset. You have experienced a fundamental change in perspective. You will see the world in a different way. Sounds crazy, but hang in there because soon we ll get to it and you ll see what I m talking about. You will never be the same. What will you do with this new outlook? You ll work the systems of your life instead of fire-killing and struggling. Work the System is the perfect name for this program, because that s what you re going to do. You re going to get inside the machinery of your life and your business and you re going to work it. You re going to work it to create the results you want. And I ll talk here briefly about cognitive psychology versus Freudian psychology. Very-very briefly, cognitive psychology has to do with dealing with your brain and your thoughts right now, manipulating them to do what you want them to do. Freudian psychology has to do with going back-back-back and trying to disarm those, what I call, psychic monsters that are creating your problems now. I don t like Freudian psychology, I m a cognitive kind of a guy. And also briefly I ll say there are two aspects of human existence, and you know this is true. There s the mechanical, and there s the emotional. And we re going to be dealing here in
Video 1: getting started, pg 5 of 7 this program with the mechanical. The emotional will come afterwards. There s plenty of information out there about dealing with the emotions. But we re going to deal here with the mechanics. We re going to get down to the basic machinery of your life. This leads to Work the System principle # 4 a novel and, some would say, backwards approach to getting what you want. Fix the mechanical and the emotional will follow along. Self-help tapes, feel-good weekends, motivational seminars, rah-rah company events, etc. Mental gyrations are only that, mental gyrations. You need to build a framework of systems and sub-systems for your business and life as these will force you to be efficient and effective. The problem with feel-good motivational stuff is that it usually lacks structure. It almost always lacks an inherent process designed to guide you into taking consistent regular action. Work the System Principle #5 your new vantage point is outside and slightly elevated. You re going to be looking down on things. You re going to be looking down on yourself. And this is a key point in the whole process. And we ll get to that momentarily. But I ll say this now. To see where you fit into your world you must get outside of it. You must get outside of it to see where you are a part of it. Let s talk about control and Work the System principle #6 you want as much of it as you can get. Control is a good thing. It s not a bad thing. You re not going to turn into a control freak, you re going to turn into somebody who s in control of your own life. Work the System principle #7 I say, three steps forward and one step back is the way it goes. Things will not be perfect. They re not perfect now, are they? And they re not going to be perfect after the program. But, I ll tell you, they re going to be a whole lot more perfect than they are now. But there will always be steps backwards, and you re going to learn to deal with these elegantly, quickly, and efficiently. Work the System principle #8 tweak, don t replace. What I m saying here is that your systems in your life are probably pretty darn good the way they are. You don t need to turn your world upside down! In all probability you don t have to turn your life upside down. If your systems are pretty good as they are that means we can get inside, make a few, what I call, tweaks, and get your machines running efficiently. So, there s eight principles. There will be more, of course. But this is a good place to start. And I want to tell you I use my company, Centratel, as a laboratory. I ve had it for 27 years. The first 15 years were a nightmare, and year 16 was a complete turnaround. And now I do work two hours a week and I make way-way more money than I ever did before. It s a perfect isolated primary system to study a new methodology. And that s what we ve done here. And I ll refer back
Video 1: getting started, pg 6 of 7 14:38 to it now and then. But consider it a generic business very similar to any other business out there. It s now time to get some real clarity around your personal status quo. You need to take stock at this stage and figure out where you are within the making more and working less world. Once you ve taken stock it s then time for you to set two very simple goals, and we re going to move onto those in a minute. If you could take out your progress checker, and you would have been sent a copy of the progress checker in the mail when you first began the program. And you ll also be able to find a copy of it in the template section of the site. Now, the simple progress checker document will help you keep tabs on the most important metrics in your life and business. Please make a note in your calendar to fill out the progress checker on the correct dates. So, that s four weeks down the line, eight weeks down the line, twelve weeks down the line, six months, and then twelve months down the line. But in the first instance you need to look at the very first column, the Before you begin column. This is a really simple, but, very important task, and please take the time to do it now. So, let s just briefly run down the first column and take a look at the entries we re asking you to fill out. So, #1 is the number of hours you currently work per week. Secondly, the total number of working procedures identified in your business. And as you ll see we ve put Not applicable at the moment, because you won t know at this stage how many different systems and how many different procedures you have in your business because we haven t got around to that particular exercise. The next entry is how stressed you feel from 0 to 10, with ten being the most stressed. Next is your income. And you ll note that in your income row in weeks four, eight, and twelve, we ve suggested you don t fill that in. The likelihood of you seeing a market increase in income very quickly is fairly slim. Your increase in income will come a little bit further down the road. You need to build the infrastructure of the business in the first instance. Start reducing your time. Start becoming more efficient and more organized and the income piece should follow on later. And now moving on to the second section in the progress checker, under the header, Your ability to manage the key systems of your life. So, the first entry is Work. And again, it s a score from 0 to 10 showing that you have full control of your business and you absolutely love what you do. The next entry is, Health. Again, 0 to 10 with ten being the healthiest. Next entry is, Friends. From 0 to 10 with ten being that you have great relationships with all of your friends.
Video 1: getting started, pg 7 of 7 19:16 And then comes, Family. Again, from 0 to 10 with ten being that you have a great relationship with all of your family. Finally, General well-being. Again, 0 to 10 with ten being that you feel generally great about life. Now, it s important that you fill these entries in straight away. This gives you a marker. This gives you a starting point to refer back to. The key to the Work the System program is having that feeling that you re making progress. So, please fill out that first column and then refer back to it. Calendarize to come back to it in weeks four, weeks eight, weeks twelve, and then month six and month twelve. And once you ve filled in your progress checker, the next thing I d like you to do is pull out your do-it-now sheet and answer these two big questions. Firstly, how many hours a week do you want to work? And secondly, what is your target personal monthly income? So you just need to ring whichever answer is the most suitable. And again, you want to keep that somewhere where you can refer back to it regularly. It s important at this stage to have a couple of major goals so that you know the general direction you re heading. Okay, so, a couple more tasks before we finish today s video, and we re not going to set lots and lots of exercises throughout the Work the System video series, but each one that we do set you is important and it s critical that you answer the questions straight away, fill out the do-it-now sheets, and complete your answers. So, let s move on to the next do-it-now exercise. Here it is if you don t earn the kind of money you would like to earn then make a list of up to 20 things you would like to do with your money when you have more of it. Once you re done completing that list go here. If you don t have the kind of free time in your life to pursue certain interests then make a list of the 20 things you would do if you had more time. So, presuming you re done with that list, let me ask a question. Have you ever changed your mind about a major life positioning? And are you willing to make a significant mindset shift now? And one more question. How do you operate? If you had to choose one option only would you describe yourself as more of a mechanical or more of an emotional operator? I want to hammer this home. It s very important that you do the exercises. We ve all done these kinds of exercises before. But for the Work the System program it is essential that you complete these exercises! Writing things down does something magical. There s not a lot of it, there s a little bit of it. Work it through, be confident, do it step by step, and trust the process. And we ll see you on the next session! Thanks Mike. 20:40 Thank you very much, Sam.