The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason Miles: [00:00:28] All right. Let’s talk today about business process. If you struggle with overwhelm, distraction, spending too much time on the wrong things, while the most important things about your business go unfinished, then we need to talk about a solution to that situation. And today we’re going to do that by talking about business process.
Michael, I know that this is a super important topic to you. How are you doing, man?
Michael Veazey: [00:00:48] I’m doing very well. Thank you. Yes, this is indeed a topic that I’m really passionate about at the moment, and that’s not because I’m so great at it, it’s because I’ve been struggling with it, but I truly believe that it’s the solution [00:01:00] to a lot of the things you were saying. You know, overwhelm, distraction, spending too much time on the wrong things.
I was just thinking, if I were listening to that podcast intro, I’d be saying, I need to listen for more of this. So that’s my motivation. You nailed. You nailed it in one.
Jason Miles: [00:01:12] All right. So let’s talk about it, but in this episode, let’s dig into it. So I guess we should start with just the basics. What do you mean by business process? Sounds kind of boring. Sounds kind of like a, do we have to talk about this? But I think we can have energy in life as we do it. I think there are practical tips and suggestions along the way.
So how do you define, you know, like the topic of business process in that regard?
Michael Veazey: [00:01:37] I’m very glad you asked that question. I think there’s some interesting questions about that, but first I want to respond to your point about processes. Boring idea. I mean, we can often feel that, and I feel like what I’ve had the luck of speaking to two or three podcast guests recently in some of the off air discussion, some of it on there.
And actually there’s a such a huge passion from them about the fact that you can build a scalable business, that you work fewer hours and make [00:02:00] more money, which is something we all want. And I’m really pushing for that partly the behest of my wife, which is a very sensible, normal thing. And. That is, I think that what a process offers, it is more than just a solution to a nasty problem that you have to get into if you really, really have to.
And I think also what it gives you is actually a process. And the ability to build a process is kind of the ability to build businesses because what is a business, one of my guests of the day, Dylan Carter said basically businesses, series of equations, or another way of putting it is it’s a system of systems.
And if that’s what we’re building, then the act of creating a process. It is a creative act. And that for me is what the mental corner that I’ve turned recently is to think about myself as creative type person, a musical background, and instead of thinking process is something for the back room, guys and gals in a bit dull.
It’s actually creative. And so that’s my. Sort of relationship to it as those changed. So that’s the first thing. To answer your question about the, what it is, I think it [00:03:00] is a system of systems. It’s a way of doing things and it’s a repeatable way of doing things. So I think there’s a big difference between a process and a project and you can have a sort of repeatable process that you borrow from somebody else for one off project, which is a very wise idea.
I think it gets really critical is where you’re going to repeat things again and again. To not have a process means that you risk all sorts of downsides. You risk, inconsistency, which if you’re delivering stuff to customers or marketing is very bad for your reputation. You risk a lot of wasted time.
You just burnout yourself, which is really true for the smaller businesses where, you know, one person, one, two, three people. I’m one person with a few VAs and you risk burning out your staff as well. And I’ve experienced all that, done myself and seen that as well. So those are the reasons why I think you’ve got to have it and roughly what it is.
Jason Miles: [00:03:45] Hmm. I like that. That’s awesome. Love it, man. yeah, I mean, I, I guess I haven’t ever thought about this topic deeply. I know you can tell you have, I just, I guess I’m a quick start action oriented [00:04:00] guy, so I think of more distance. To do lists, you know, checklist. I guess just because I’m trying to get things finished.
and over time I guess that’s turned into process. Yeah. but it has never been my, like my, my initial thinking. but I can see the value of it. Of course. Yeah.
Michael Veazey: [00:04:16] Well, it seems to be what you’re saying. I mean, I think the checklist thing is, that’s kind of, that is literally what I was looking into recently. one of these things that, somebody mentioned to me is, a checklist based, program, which I forget what it is now. We’ll put it in the show notes, which will be of course, at the eCommerce leader.com as ever, but I can’t remember what it is.
But there, there was, A checklist based thing and you know, checklists and series of checklist doesn’t seem that sexy. What I’ve discovered recently is a thing called flow stir, which was actually created, I discovered after finding it and using it a bit and had a chat to the owner of it and the creator of it and the co founder, and he was actually an Amazon seller and was still is, I think he runs a wholesale business on very, very few hours a week, which got to a million dollars revenue within the first year.
Yeah. And I don’t know what the profit is, but assuming it’s profitable still, [00:05:00] and he seems. Really calm. And he’s very, very passionate about process. And it’s kind of infectious. And what flows through will do is create a sort of template for very commonly done tasks. Like he’s got a massive template for creating podcasts, for example, or for setting up an Amazon listing or optimizing an Amazon listing or PPC campaign creation for Amazon.
And then you can create a version of it, which is basically a mini set of tasks. And then you can outsource that to somebody else. And you can include things like screenshots, videos, links, whatever you need. So you’re creating, A process that will run without you. And it also means that if you get new staff on board, that they can be plugged into that.
And of course there’s an onboarding and training process, but you’re creating something that exists, so some extent separately from you and runs to some extent without you, but you have to put the work in upfront. And that’s really, I think, quite different from the idea of just checklists, which is, you know what?
I’ve been thinking of it until fairly recently.
Jason Miles: [00:05:54] Yeah. Sure.
Michael Veazey: [00:05:55] So tell me a bit about your, your own approach to it. Cause you obviously a successful business owner and you’ve got, [00:06:00] you know, a couple of different types of businesses with your Shopify store and with your winning on Shopify training and consulting side, what are your sort of processes that have developed over time then.
Jason Miles: [00:06:10] Well, I mean, I think, I think the way I look at this stuff more is, maybe this will answer a few questions at once. the first employee that you have in your business as you, and so the question is, when you’re starting out, what do you, how do you build a system. That actually gets you hyper motivated to do the right things in the right way.
And so, I mean, I th I think that as I reflect on this, I think the first thing that I reflect on is, I’m a mission driven person. I have a mission statement. I have, I spent time. And energy, and I was in a graduate school course that they required me to do that, but I’m so grateful that they did where I ended up with a personal mission statement that I’ve tried to hold true to.
And so I think being on mission is important. I think having principals, I made it a little, I made a little note here [00:07:00] before we started it. It’s like this on-mission with principals toward goals, with a team. And I think for me, having a personal mission that I’m trying to strive for is important.
Having principles for myself and my business I think about, I meditate on, I incorporate into our life having specific short term goals and longterm goals. And then having a team. And even if you’re a team of one, you’re the team. You know, you get to be schizophrenia or bipolar. You get to be the boss of you and rig it up so that you maximize your effort personally.
And so, I mean, I think that’s how I kind of incorporate process into this is how, you know, at the highest level, how does it fit into achieving mission and principles and goals and teamwork.
Michael Veazey: [00:07:49] I really liked that. And I think what you described in a sense, it’s a process or a process depending on which side of the pond you’re on for, creating, if you like a constitution, I suppose you would say. I was reading up about, Washington [00:08:00] state. And of course has a state constitution, which kind of a bit different from, from the British perspective.
We don’t have really a very clean written constitution, and we certainly don’t have one for each bit part of the country. But I think it’s interesting that there’s presumably a process for how you go about doing that. And even the process for creating motivation for yourself is actually quite structured by the sound of it.
So you’ve got your mission, you’ve got the team, you’ve got the principles,
Jason Miles: [00:08:23] Well that’s a, that’s a good point.
Michael Veazey: [00:08:25] it is a process you’ve gone through there, haven’t you?
Jason Miles: [00:08:27] If you start a business like, okay, so I mean, I think that’s a trap that people could fall into is you just start selling without starting a business. And if you start a business, you ask yourself, what’s the purpose and mission of this business? And if you just jump into, I can buy cookies at a at dollar store and sell them on Amazon and make 17 you know, dollars a box.
You haven’t stepped back and said, what’s the mission of my business? You know, what are my, what are my goals and my principles? How am I going to operate ethically and accept, you know, personally, ethically, and [00:09:00] inside the, the business. so yeah, I mean, I think that’s a founding idea here is you got to do the beginning work, the initial work of are you starting a company?
Is this a business? Yeah. Would you say to your investors or shareholders, you have a per a mission that you’re driving towards? yeah. I think that’s how I look at process stuff.
Michael Veazey: [00:09:18] really fascinating. and what I think is interesting about what you just said is this, that.
You’re articulating a process, which actually I think is quite structured. You know, you wrote a mission statement. I mean, I understand that the idea of checklist is very dry. The idea of a mission statement clearly has motivated you greatly, but that’s a process in the fact that somebody sat you down and said, you need to write a mission statement.
Okay, how do you write it? Well, you need to think about what you need. Who are you going to serve, what your principles are, all those that those are very process driven things I would say. I mean it’s, it’s not a dry as dust checkbox that you’d outsource to a computer or somebody in the Philippines, but it is the process.
Now, the next thing that that brings me to is exactly what you’re saying, like a start up that that [00:10:00] starts by just selling widgets isn’t really a business. It’s just a bit of activity I would say. And the difference is I guess that there is a process to, to starting up. A company, which I think is quite different from the ready-made.
Everyone thinks process means SOP, standard operating procedures, which for starters is a military thing. And you may be a fan of military things you may not be, but that’s a very, hard edge defined environment. that’s not quite the same environment that we’re necessarily, I mean, businesses, war is not a bad metaphor in some ways, but in other ways, the reason why you start, a business is a bit more like starting it.
You know. a small, I was gonna say it’s more nation’s a bit exaggerated, but you know, finding a village or a town, which is more in the American recent experience than mine. I’m in Seattle, was founded pretty recently, 1850s by some British dudes apparently. And you know, that was, they had to come up with a town council meeting and a reason for existence.
And I think that the massive mistake people make in the startup phase is that, I’m going to say start at phase. I mean, a business is a startup, but then so as a new product in a sense, and so as a new customer segment, [00:11:00] and so as a new channel, so there are many terms of startup, even within a business that might have been in existence for decades.
And at that point you need to have a different process than. The one for optimizing or making more money or scaling or outsourcing an existing business. That’s proven, and I think one of the missing pieces, exactly what you just said, which is the sort of mission statement. The other missing piece, it’s just hard to get a handle on.
But very recently, relatively in business thinking, I think is Eric Reese with his, the lean startup idea. And I’m not. Applying those to Toyota, for example, which is a very established company, obviously huge, but applying it to the process of figuring out the questions that you need to ask and then is there any kind of worthwhile problem to solve here and is there a product market fit before you worry about, can I outsource this and produce 10,000 widgets?
How do I source 10,000 widgets? How do I sell it to 10,000 people without going crazy? That’s a different question. And what interests me is today. Dive into that recently because I think there are a lot of [00:12:00] Amazon type startups or, or Shopify, or if you’re going from, I was in to Shopify where you need to validate things before you worry about scaling up.
And that’s still a process and it’s often left to chance and sweat. So that’s what my particular bugbear at the moment.
Jason Miles: [00:12:16] No, I think I love that. And you know, before the lean stuff came around, I like just as a, as a point of reference, I like a podcast a lot. that’s a 10X talk. Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish has a classic phrase he uses as he describes the highest level evaluators of a business, and he calls him elf and half is your business easy, lucrative, and fun.
And so he’s speaking specifically to, you know, sort of the founding principles of a business process or what the process should create, which is easy, lucrative, and fun. And then half is the alternate, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And all of us have been there, man. I mean, as soon as you start building a business, you realize [00:13:00] there’s some stuff that’s hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, and there’s, and you got to figure out how to get out of that.
Stop doing it. Have other people do it for you, simplify it, whatever. But because obviously you want to be easy, lucrative, and fun with your business effort. So to me, the highest level, you know, the lean, the baleen book came out. I was like, okay, I get it. But that never really spoke to me. It never really stuck into my mind.
It wasn’t a splinter in my mind where I said, this is something I’m going to run on for a long time, but the elephant half, I don’t know. I just, it just sticks in my mind as I want this. I don’t want that. And it wouldn’t be a process to make these things become a reality.
Michael Veazey: [00:13:40] I think it probably helps with goal clarity and, and I know what you mean about things that stick in your mind. I mean, the thing about the lean startup, I read it awhile ago and read it again. Thinking, well, in theory I should be loving this book because it has the sort of mentality, model, mental model.
That I should resonate with, but I agree that I find it a bit hard to stick in my mind. I’m finding this Ash [00:14:00] Maria book is, he’s boiled it down more this running lean book, which I’ve mentioned last episode. So I’m obviously obsessing about it at the moment, but he’s brought it down to this idea of the lean canvas, which a business model canvas is like a very simplified but very, helpful.
Business model, sort of simplification. And there are nine elements of which I don’t remember all of it, but one of the things he, he points out is that the solution part by your product. And we talked about product strategy last time, right? And this is the flip side of it, is what you already implied in the last episode, which is yet you’ve got to make sure you are solving a problem for a particular type of customer.
So your niche choice and what he talks about, it emphasizes more that you need to define the problem. Really clearly before you even think about trying to sell the solution. I’ve just been going through it. The idea of, you know, customer interviews before you have customers, you know, potential customer interviews, I suppose with people that have the right kind of problem, and you’ve got to define.
Is there actually a problem as big as you thought, and do people care enough about it to do some, make some efforts? And if they’re not, if they’re willing [00:15:00] to, you know, just use the free stuff out there and they’re not really motivated to do awkward workarounds or whatever, then you may not have a solution that’s sorry.
A problem that’s big enough to be worth solving and that you’ve really got to deal with that before you worry about the solution. I E. The product and there’s a few other different bits and pieces. And the other thing is clarifying what hypothesis you’re testing. And if you just carry it around in your head, it doesn’t help.
And for me, having it literally on one, a full page or whatever letter size page that you’d have in America, that that is a clarifying device. And that’s this other thing that does stick in my head. Cause you can actually literally just write it out for somebody in five minutes and say, okay, business coach, what do you think of this?
Jason Miles: [00:15:37] Okay, so I was going to ask you about that, like how do you go about this? How, like how do you, as you’re building out your business or new aspects of your business, and you’re saying to yourself, you know, I need to develop a sort of standardized process around this aspect of, of the work, what do you do?
Like how do you, how do you go about it now? I know a little bit from being the podcast cohost with you, sort of the tools that [00:16:00] you use and that kind of thing, but what, how would you outline it for people.
Michael Veazey: [00:16:03] The first thing I would say is, two, two things about. how not to do it, which is, or put it another way. often the answer is don’t build a process. Take one that already exists. Because this is what struck me recently. I mean, and it kind of, I kind of theoretically knew this, but recently it’s really struck me with great force.
For some reason, it’s taken this long, like, hang on a second. What if there were people out there who’d sold on Amazon once or twice before and had standardized processes for product research? Listing, optimization, whatever, and and had them organized in such a form that I could use them. And it turns out those things exist.
So this, this was brought to my attention really strongly because we’re in a. 10 K collective mastermind meeting two, three weeks ago. And one of the guys there who I’ve mentioned before, and he’s, he was saying, look, frankly, that the on the Amazon skill set is fairly commoditized. I mean, of course you need to get good at it and it’s quite complex and it’s technical.
It takes [00:17:00] skill, but nevertheless, it, you know, surely you should be focusing on something that’s more defensible and more creative and coming to the elf versus half thing. Probably a lot more fun creating a product that answers a genuinely strong customer need and nobody else is really nailing that problem than just spending your life messing around with PPC and managing to get your advertising to sales ratio down to 13% but it’s still really high because there’s a lot of competition.
Cause what you offer isn’t very unique, you know? So I think to come back, to try and answer your question, the first thing is don’t create a process. Look for an existing version of the process and only create it. If it doesn’t already exist, it sounds kind of easy to say, but it’s, there’s a lot out there.
It’s amazing.
Jason Miles: [00:17:42] Yeah. Let me just to re two reflections on that. I heard Elon Musk, I’m an ultimate Tesla fan boy and shareholder. So I, you know, I follow along all this stuff and and I heard him say recently the best, I forget exactly his word choice, but it was like the best process is [00:18:00] not needing a process. So the first, and it really is like a, like a Zen wisdom kind of thing is like, you know, complexity is not wise.
Simplicity and having as lean and I guess that’s, you know, in our minds we want that concept of, I think we like the concept of having a lean business. Cause we like the phrasing of it. What we really want is a simple business. With no process. And I mean, and, and you can’t have no process, right? But you can make sure that you never create processes for things that candidly don’t even need to be done in the first place.
And I think that’s the first point. And then second point is what you just said, I love, is you need to model yourself after the best people in the country or world. The most. know, effective. E-commerce sellers in this topic or genre, let’s, let’s go find the very best people and let’s model what they do.
And modeling to me as a core tenant of personal learning is [00:19:00] like, you know, who can you go out and copy? How do you, how do you find world-class models to copy? I love that. I mean, I think that’s a huge part of a shortcut to learn, you know,
Michael Veazey: [00:19:09] I agree. Well, I would say just two things in response to that. First of all, I’m not necessarily saying model you just having some complex way you can just, if it’s standard operating stuff, you can literally copy it. I mean, legally and with permission, you know, but there are people who will study processes.
A friend of mine, Reed Menssa does, has a thing called econ process.com and I’ve got the inside look into it as a user. And it’s just a crazily large collection of processes, but you have such a greatly written hierarchy. And he was in the oil patch in Canada. So you had to be meticulous about process because otherwise people died.
And because that’s absolutely his thing. He’s created a monster system. But that is so slick and it’s, it’s a machine. It’s like the rolls Royce of, of these things, and it’s not particularly cheap, but I, you know, for somebody who’s working at scale, you should be just plugging into that and then go away and create amazing products, which is more.
harder to know and, and, [00:20:00] and more unknowable and you know, more messy process if you more genuinely creating what entrepreneurial. That’s the managerial slash operations stuff. I think actually to an amazingly high degree exists already. So it’s not just a question of modeling necessarily. It’s a question of just take it as it is.
And the thing is that, talking of simple, the, the complex person and you and I like, you know, the strategic level view is it’s to kind of model, reverse engineer their principles and then put those principles into practice. And at the strategic level, you probably should because you need to differentiate your business.
But at the tactical operational level, a lot of it you just literally copy or plug into somebody else’s system. And then get on with the day because it’s dealt with. I don’t mean you don’t have to learn to manage the system, but at least that’s a whole different thing. Like I can go and learn to conduct a symphony with, you know, 2030 hard hours of study and some rehearsals.
Whereas if I had to write one, it would be thousands of hours. There’s just a huge orders of magnitude difference between creating a business system, but just learning to run a preexisting prebuttal [00:21:00] tested. Excellent one. So I really think that. There’s so much out there. It’s amazing what is out there that you could just buy.
It’s a readymade process. You can then tweak it. The other thing I wanted to say is this. When it comes to your own processes, there’s a big way of thinking that I’ve had to overcome, which is that. If you’re a quick start person, which I am as well, by the way, the Colby version right there, the sort of assessment of business personality and how we work and stuff.
it’s very tempting to think, Oh, I haven’t got time for that and it’s going to restrict me. But actually it the other way I would say that there’s a great saying by Gary Vaynerchuk, which is document don’t create. So if you’re creating content as a business owner, just document what you’re doing every day.
And I found that by the way, very effective way of creating content effortlessly, and it often resonates better than the stuff I’ve spent ages creating. And I would say related relation with with processes is document. Don’t legislate, just look at what you’re actually doing. Just write it down literally on a piece of a full paper.
Sometimes it will take you 10 minutes. Like I did this for podcasting a while ago, and I redo that. Every software gets buddies hundreds of episodes a year, and [00:22:00] therefore it’s very much a repeated process. And if I can shave, you know, 30% of the time I take for that, that’s a hundreds of hours a year. And yeah.
Actually, you just write it down on a piece of paper and then talking about simple. You can just go, why am I bothering with that? I don’t think anyone’s going to care about it. I think, you know, I could get rid of that, but the process and that bit of the process and just draw a line through it on a piece of paper.
Suddenly you’ve just drawn a line through something on a piece of paper. It took you three minutes to write down and it saved you a hundred hours over the next three months. That’s kind of magic, you know? That’s why I’m like, okay, I’m in with this process thing. You know?
Jason Miles: [00:22:30] We, yeah, we, we do something similar and which is with a lot of our team members will, we’ll just flip on. We literally use zoom. We flip it on, share our screen record and just talk through process. So be like, okay, I’m going to show you how to do this next thing and make a video for our team members.
Send them a video, and then that’s, they’ve got their training and the process steps and, and a visual demonstration of it all in one. so that’s kinda how we use, you know, the, the same, [00:23:00] same idea, which is jot down or document what you’re doing. I, I love that, Gary V idea document, don’t create, is that what
Michael Veazey: [00:23:07] That’s what he said. Document, don’t create. Yeah. Genius. I mean,
Jason Miles: [00:23:10] That’s good.
Michael Veazey: [00:23:11] it’s, yeah. I can’t fault it. I found it to be very true.
Jason Miles: [00:23:15] Love it.
Michael Veazey: [00:23:16] So tell me a bit about your. Relationship to process. This might sound like a funny thing to say and when we’re going to dig into the detail like everything else on this podcast, so there’s no rush there, but I think the, the, the emotional or sort of other relationship to process, like we all know about the soapies, we’ve all heard it.
We’ve read books. What would you say is your greatest resistance to implementing, you know, more structured ways of doing things? Or do you even think that it would even help you in your personality and your business?
Jason Miles: [00:23:45] Well, yeah, sure. I know that for my own, workstyle I’ve, you know, the Birkman assessment. Have you ever heard of Berkman Roger Birkman? it’s an interesting assessment tool and he documents something about the way that tool is structured. It has, a documentation [00:24:00] of what they call your usual style, and then they have a documentation of what they call your stress.
Style and then a documentation of your needs and the thesis. He built us on us. If you’re getting your needs met, you operate in your usual style, but if your needs aren’t met, you operate in your stress behavior. And so as I took that assessment, I was like, Oh, this is really interesting. And so what I learned about myself in that assessment process is under stress.
I become more structured and I see it in my behavior. Like if I get stressed. I need an outline. If I get stressed, I needed to do list. If I, you know, that’s where my mind goes. If I’m not under stress, I’m more winging it, type, make it up as you go type guy. and so in a lot of ways, a good. A good stress, use, useful stress, is helpful to me.
You know, and, and I guess I, in a way, I create my own stress. I create my stress with deadlines. [00:25:00] I create my stress with financial goals. I create my stress with expectations. I, I, I raised the bar for myself mentally as a game so that I’ve created a stress. That, that then forces me to work under a systematic process.
Michael Veazey: [00:25:18] That’s very interesting.
Jason Miles: [00:25:20] Yeah. That’s how I, that’s kind of how I approach it. And it’s real practical stuff, man. You know, like we have a podcast, the e-commerce leader, what is my goal? I want to be the number one podcast for the phrase e-commerce. I’ve put that in my mind. That puts a lot of process to do’s on my list, you know?
Michael Veazey: [00:25:39] well, I didn’t really, I didn’t even realize we were shooting for that. That’s pretty ambitious. I better up my game, but there you go. Yeah. I love what you just said there. There’s like good stress and bad stress, like you stress as Tim Ferris called it in in the four hour work week. Right. I think you’re right.
Putting a big goal forces you to. It’s a bit like stress testing the banks, which they talk about and they’ve recently come up again. Right. And I think even [00:26:00] as a mental game. Okay, so how would you get to that? Well, I sure as heck aren’t going to just kind of free my own FreeWheel. My way to that. We’re going to have to have a very structured process and you and I, as we can go in through that.
Of course, like a product launch. It’s the same with a physical product launch or a membership or anything else, promotion through your own lists and external lists and possibly paid staff and unpaid. And that brings us back to the traffic channels thing. Right. But I think what you just said is very interesting because the other way I’d flip it on its head and say, okay, if businesses war as a metaphor, as you’ve mentioned before, and I think there’s a lot in that, then that’s the ultimate stress situation, which is why military training is so robust and so rigorous.
And I think that having a business that has really clear, strong processes means that number one, when the stress is on. Which if you’re ambitious, it kind of should be. If there’s nothing much happening in your business that’s stressful, it probably means you’re not doing much either. I’m not saying, you know, unnecessary stress, but some pressure expectation if you like.
Then I think, . Finding the processes in [00:27:00] response to that means that you’ve got a more robust business going forward. Plus it answers your tiger proof question, which is, can your business run without you? And I think without clear written processes or documented processes, that’s going to be hard to do as well, which is the really exciting bit for me.
Owning an asset, you don’t work in much.
Jason Miles: [00:27:15] I guess the question is, do you want to have exterior stressors put on you or would you rather have, would you manage the stress that’s put on you? It was a fundamental way of looking at it. I don’t want the market to put stress on me. I don’t want Amazon competition to put stress on me, or Amazon terms of service changes or process changes, putting stress on me.
I want to put my own stress on myself so that. My level of output and effectiveness, is Bulletproof from Amazon business change. I mean, if your business is, is, is, is skewered by any process change, you have vulnerabilities and you have to be, you think ahead, two steps. How do I create a process that makes me [00:28:00] Bulletproof from.
XYZ potential negative outcome, and then you’ve demanded of yourself that work ahead of time and you know how it is. It’s like, when do you want to plant a tree 20 years ago or today? Well, today if you haven’t planted one, but ideally it would have been done before.
That’s how I learn.
Michael Veazey: [00:28:16] I agree. So, and another way of getting excited about process then, which I think is part of the discussion we’re having, isn’t it? It’s not just how do you do it. There’s quite well documented in some ways, but the mental relationship to it is really important. And as the Elon Musk quote said, you know, don’t over-engineer, simplify a lot of documenting process for me.
Is about simplifying. Another aspect that we talked about then is, making things stronger, both of which are quite reassuring, emotional led feelings for me that if I feel my business’s simpler, I don’t have to stress about understanding what’s going on in it. Cause I can see it more easily. And if it’s more defensible, I’m less worried about what’s coming down the pike at me.
And those are both quite emotionally driven reasons for me [00:29:00] for doing it. So. Yeah. I think he’s kind of coming to terms with the necessity of, and the value of process for me is, is a lot of it really, if you,
especially if you’re a quick start, like yourself and myself.
Jason Miles: [00:29:09] yeah. The other aspect is you’re documenting stuff, obviously for the purpose of handing it off.
Michael Veazey: [00:29:15] Hmm,
Jason Miles: [00:29:16] And so then in implied in that the, the, the implicit idea there is you want to hand stuff off to somebody else who can do it. So it frees you up. And I always think of this idea that I always ask our team members, and I, I use this with our team is asking this question, what’s the highest and best use of your time? If you’re, if you’re doing something that shouldn’t be done, it’s the worst possible thing. If you’re doing something and then a step up from that would be if you’re doing something that someone else could do, then you’re, you’re again, you know, you’re, you’re wasting your time and it’s not a good outcome.
You, each of us in a business should be doing what [00:30:00] only we could do and that the unique skill that only we could bring to the party. And I mean, that’s sort of the mantra, I think as you document process and you hand them off, it’s like, who’s going to do this? Well, everybody should operate under the principle that they’re using.
You know, the highest and best use of their personal time should be used. So even if you have a VA in the Philippines, you ask them to do something. If they’re smelter, they’ll come back and say, Hey, there’s a paid tool I could use to do this, like robotically. If this, then that, you know, hook it up one time and then it just does stuff for us on the internet.
and I think that’s the, that’s the smartest way to look at this process. Stuff is highest and best use of somebody’s, of anybody’s time on the team.
Michael Veazey: [00:30:42] that’s a really fantastic way of looking at things, and that reminds me of tacky more that a business coach who’s a friends with James Franco, who I think you listen to, I certainly. I think that he has for a four way division of sorts of tasks that you can do bad, which is obviously the stuff we want to get off our plates first.
The stuff you’re competent at [00:31:00] but don’t really love and not an amazing at, is a real trap for most of us. And that includes me with, for example, audio editing right now. So if you’re good at, which is an even worse trap because you’re not. Amazing art, and you can stay doing that for the rest of your life.
And then there’s stuff you’re a genius at, which is more or less, as you said, you know, only you can do, or that’s probably a bit ambitious in a world of several billion people, but I mean, possibly you’re one of the best in your industry or the best. and that’s what you got to focus on, I guess.
Jason Miles: [00:31:25] Let me just, so what that is, is a skills based look at activities, but, but that’s, but that’s one look of activities. But the other thing that you should look at are not what Warren buffet does as he talks about circle of competence, which is the same, same idea. But the thing about it is, even in circle of competence, which is his.
Quotas. You should just focus on what your very, very competent at that. But that’s also a skills based look at activities. The the harder question. I mean that’s, that’s an, that’s an easy way to frame things. The harder question is what if there is [00:32:00] something that makes a business succeed that has to be done. And you’re the only person that can do it, then it’s actually not about competency of task completion. It is about who you know there is, there’s gotta be somebody who jumps on the hand grenade, can, takes one for the team or whatever. You’re the only person standing there. It doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not.
You have to do these things or you have to figure out how to get them achieved or accomplished. And I guess to me, that’s sort of how I look at it more is, Some, you can’t ignore some huge, really important business aspects because you’re, you know. Because you’re bad at it. Sometimes you have to do it, or you have to, you have to say, you know what?
At the end of the day, I’m the owner of this darn thing. The owner of it has to be responsible for, fill in the blank, whatever it is. Maybe it’s filing your taxes, or, you know, doing the legal stuff. I mean, financial, legal, [00:33:00] accounting, some of these things. It’s like, okay, I, at a minimum, I have to take responsibility for.
Michael Veazey: [00:33:06] agreed. So I guess what you’re saying there is you’ve got to differentiate between processes or processes, which are, they’re designed to outsource to a team and we’re obviously touching on the team thing, which is interesting. It’s intimately related, but not the same thing. Because if you have to do certain things yourself.
Even if you’re not that good at them, I would argue that’s where you really, really need a robust process. And again, I would argue instead of reinventing the wheel, like taxes have been filed by accountants in this country for several hundred years, they probably got an idea or two of the best ways to do it.
And some people will be complex and unnecessarily bureaucratic, and some people will be quite simple and there’ll be a few. Really fantastic accounts. Do you say? No. You don’t need to bother with that. Don’t do that. No. That’s actually not necessarily, no, don’t do that. You need this, this, and this, and this is the best way to do it, and those people are gold because you can just go, okay, can I take this piece and incorporate this?
And you’ve saved yourself hours of paying them.
Jason Miles: [00:33:54] my point is the only person in a business that can say taxes must be done and I require them to be [00:34:00] done.
Michael Veazey: [00:34:00] Yeah.
Jason Miles: [00:34:01] Is the business owner now, whether you do it yourself or not, I mean, there, there are high level items that just have to be, you know, you have to demand of your system they get accomplished. obviously,
Michael Veazey: [00:34:11] Agrees, and in which case you better have a good process for that. I think in particularly stuff that you’re going to be doing for the rest of your business life, you really need to get slick at that cause otherwise, that’s a, you know, many hours of wasted time that you will never get off your plate. So.
Well, listen, I’m, we, we’ve gone into. As ever we planned around this topic. I mean, we’ve got plenty of stuff coming up. you know, the, the processes, for example, for validating, demand for a product, really different from scaling processes. And some of it goes into the idea of business models. Some of it’s about team, which I know we need to talk about and the differences between projects and processes and various different things.
But, have you got any final sort of thoughts that you think we should be exploring or that people can take away? I’ve got a couple of ideas.
Jason Miles: [00:34:53] Yeah, let me just mention one, concept that I was hoping to mention. And it really, I think, will set the table for the topic [00:35:00] of teamwork and building teams. And it’s a phrase or a concept that Dean Jackson shares, and it’s a genius idea. And he basically says, rather than asking how to do something, ask who should do it.
And so he has this idea of find your, who. Don’t focus on the how. And so it’s sort of this meta idea that, you know, if you know something that has been in, and it gets to your point about CPI, CPAs or chartered accountants knowing how to do stuff, or you know, millennia, you find the who. And they know how to do the what the house stuff.
And, and so your job as a business owner is to find the right who, and I love that idea. It sort of sets the table for team building for finding service providers that are amazing, that kind of thing. And I think that’s a good takeaway is in terms of process one shortcut, one hack one, you know. Tactical idea to get you closer to fast completion and efficient work [00:36:00] is to find the right people.
Find the who. yeah.
Michael Veazey: [00:36:04] I agree that, I’ve heard that quote from somebody different. And I think it’s a really great quote, and what’s interesting to me is that they’re two sides of the same coin processes and teams, but some people are more team oriented and have done very, very well with that because they’re more people oriented and some people are very, very process oriented.
They tend to have mathematical. Backgrounds like Dylan Carter’s got it. Just finished a finance degree are the ones that are developers and they got a mathematical thing in the end. I guess where you start is your comfort zone and your strength. Right. And in your case of mine, I guess we’re probably more naturally team oriented and work towards process.
Some people start with process and eventually realize they might have to talk to a human being to sort things out. And it’s an extrovert introvert sort of thing as well. But yeah. very interesting cause in the end I think whether you start with a team member and then develop process, which happened for me with my podcast editor, for example, Daniel, you know, I was sending him a bunch of Skype messages and eventually he created this wonderful thing called an air table, which I’ve since turned into a [00:37:00] monster and now plugged you into that.
So, or whether you start the other way round because you’re totally shy. I think it doesn’t matter. But these, these are, Incredibly powerful things to reflect on. And what I love about both of these things, I love the health half and elf thing is that the promise of either or both done well and which I have experienced, is that you get to do more of what you enjoy.
You have to do the bad stuff. As you said, you can’t always escape from that death and taxes. But, You can minimize the effort and maximize the outcome of that. And those were all beautiful outcomes for me cause I love more money with less work and that’s what these things can deliver. So, yeah, love that.
And that, that implies, of course, what’s coming up is team building and I’m looking forward to talking about that. One of my favorite things, teams generally that interactive stuff has catnip for me. I think that it’s your thing as well. So I’m looking forward to picking your brain about that as well.
Jason Miles: [00:37:52] For sure. Sounds great, man. Let’s jump into the next episode soon and until then, check out our resources at the e-commerce [00:38:00] leader.com we’ve got some freebies, goodies, a process actually steps in, involve there. I just realized that as we were talking about this, we should mention those, and then if you’re enjoying this part of the process of podcast listenership is subscribing.
And, giving us a review as well, and we’d love that.