I have been reading about George Soros “Alchemy of Finance”. He wrote a book about his thought processes while running his fund thinking that if he wrote about it, his thoughts would be more clear and improved.
I have often found writing to clarify thinking and in scaling my business I am writing down my thoughts about that.
A business is a machine and it is important to optimise that machine.
Right now the market has changed and there are huge opportunities to scale up. The next step is to optimise the machine, to have the right processes, systems and people in place.
In the past I have been working insanely hard, up to my physical limit. Sometimes this can be counter productive when your decision making ability deteriorates. In order to build a business effectively it is often not necessary to work hard, but setting up the systems, team, is more important. Some of the actions that you need to take are counter-intuitive. It seems odd that you can work less but decisions, thinking from the bigger picture can be more important.
I got in the habit of doing too much myself and became the bottleneck.
Theory of Constraints
The theory of constraints (TOC) is a management paradigm that views any manageable system as being limited in achieving more of its goals by a very small number of constraints.
It is my belief that every business has a limiting factor but often in the past I used to work on everything at once. It’s much better to step back and focus on that single point that is causing the constraint, just like a hosepipe has a kink, a business has a limit to growth.
One of those constraints before has been me – the bottleneck, involved in too much.
That’s why I love Dan Martell’s book “Buy Back Your Time”. He suggests hiring people to take on your lowest leverage activities so you can use that time on higher impact activities. Starting with a personal assistant, in the following order. While you are replying to emails, you could have an assistant doing that and you could be on a sales call.
In some ways it can be scary to hire someone to do something you’ve been doing it when you don’t totally need it, but you need to trust that by giving you more time you will be able to put that time into higher impact activities.
And also that it’s better to hire someone and that the company has some slack or extra capacity to grow rather than always being starved for manpower.
There is a question about cash and it goes without saying that it’s important to keep an eye on this at all times. When scaling a team it is important to have a good financial model in place.
Our model is self funded and we are funded by our customers who in advance for our service.
He suggests training them in this method
Right now I have two constraints, because we are effectively two businesses (one of universities, one for students).
- Delivery of marketing for universities. I need to design the system and hire or assign someone to manage this.
This person will be giving universities updates, managing events and introducing them to events, and communicating with them, ensuring that they are satisfied.After this then I will to work more on university sales and hire someone to manage that.
- Sales process for students. To provide training, incentives and training for the sales team to scale up, or to provide additional manpower on this. I need to define this problem more clearly because I’m not clear on what the issue is but I know its the biggest constraint now on student side.
In order to get to the next level we need to have an awesome hiring process.
I am looking forward to expanding the team and scaling to the next level.
I also like Frank Slootman’s message in Amping it Up, how to develop a team of drivers not passengers.
I think that it’s great to be growing a business and one of the best ways to experience personal growth.
