When System Design Becomes Procrastination
The Amplified Impact Podcast
September 27th, 2023
I’ve learned to appreciate systems, especially with my ADHD.
They provide structure and have proven invaluable in my businesses. But there’s a danger in overcomplicating systems and using them as a form of procrastination.
Lately, I’ve noticed a trend on social media where entrepreneurs share complex systems that appear impressive but can obscure effectiveness.
The key is simplicity.
Simplicity scales. You don’t need intricate systems, especially in the early stages of a business.
You need to focus on sales, product improvement, and customer relations. Don’t overcomplicate things; make offers, get customers, and refine your product.
Remember, doing the work is often the most effective way to achieve your goals. Avoid the system simplicity trap and stay focused on progress.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“So we don’t need to overcomplicate this stuff, especially if you’re still in that, like, $5,000 a month range. You just need to focus more on getting customers, making offers, refining the product, and less time on all the different technologies and automations that you could be doing.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
Alright, so now I’m a really big fan of systems. I really need them in a lot of ways to function as somebody with ADHD. Like, I need those rituals, those habits, those routines. I need to have a process for going about my life. And this has served me very well since I learned this lesson a little over a decade ago. And it’s helped me in my businesses, primarily in my businesses, to create a cohesive environment for the team to come together, to know how to run towards the goal and how to execute towards excellence. That’s what systems really allow us to do. But there comes this point we got to be really mindful of is that we don’t overcomplicate systems and that we don’t use system design as a means of procrastination.
Anthony Vicino:
And this is something I’m very guilty of. And I wanted to talk about it today because I’m so guilty of it and because it is something that I’m seeing more and more and more on social media. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs are falling into this trap. See, I spent a lot of time on Twitter, so if you guys ever want to chat, like, come find me over there. I’m at Anthony Vasino. I spend a lot of time engaging and talking with other entrepreneurs, builders, creators. It’s a great community. One of the types of content that I see go viral over and over and over again is people sharing about their systems, like their content creation system on Notion or Asana.
Anthony Vicino:
And I’ve done the same thing. I did a post. Really breaking down. How? We built an $80 million company with three softwares. And I laid it all out in what I called the $80 million Blueprint. You can find it on Anthonyvacino.com blueprint. It’s a step by step guide of how we built invictus capital, more or less using just a handful of systems. And on the surface you would look at that and you think like, oh, systems are the best thing ever.
Anthony Vicino:
But as you dive into it, you start to realize that we’ve actually have very, very simple systems. To the point that what you really need is to have something that is thorough enough that you could take an idiot off the street, you could hand them your SOP you could hand them the system and they could execute more or less any job inside your business. That’s the goal that we’re trying to get to. But our goal is to do that with as few steps as possible. And that’s where the simplicity of the system is really important. Because if I have to use like ten different softwares integrating and you have your Zap here, zaps and integrations, running left and right and doing all this stuff, it’s very complicated, but in that complexity, it can obscure effectiveness. And saw Hill Bloom, my budy, wrote a tweet a couple of weeks ago about how the most productive system that he’s stumbled on over the years is just a journal and a pen. Like a pen and journal.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s it. And more and more as I go through this game of life, I find myself using my journals much more so than I do the technologies and the softwares. Now, I still use those things. They’re still helpful. But I think important that you just don’t fall into the trap of thinking, I need to have this new fancy software. I need to be using Chat GBT and this AI technology. I need to be implementing this stuff. Otherwise I’m not going to be optimized.
Anthony Vicino:
Truthfully, all the systems that if I look back and I’m being honest with myself, the systems that I’ve over optimized or I’ve spent the most time trying to perfect are the systems that I inevitably stopped using because they were too complex. Simplicity, scales, fancy fails, as they say. And so I wonder, what are those systems right now in your life that you’re working on and you’re overproducing it? You’re going too far. And at a certain point you’re working harder on the system than you are just executing the system. And you hear this from what book was it? It was The E Myth by Michael Gerber about how you need to be as a business owner working on the business, not in the business. There’s a lot of truth in that, depending on where you are in the journey. In the beginning, you need to be working a lot in the business. You need to be driving sales and delivering product and imperfecting that product, improving the customer relations, all of that stuff is you working in the business.
Anthony Vicino:
And you have to find the time and the energy to also pull out and be working on the systems that would allow you then to hire and bring people in and them to continue moving forward the business alongside you. And so because we’ve heard that idea that you need to work more on the business than in the business, we justify over refining systems rather than just getting it good enough and then just executing it. And I was thinking about this a lot recently because a couple of days ago I was a student that we were trying to figure out how to launch a product, the best way to build up the landing page, the funnel, the offer, all the different aspects of this thing. And we just took a step back and I was like, why do we need to make this so simple? Truly, it could just be as basic because he had a coaching program that he wanted to sell. It could just be as basic as making the social media post saying, hey guys, I have this program. If you’re interested in it, DM me. And then when they DM you, just send them a Google sheet with all the information about it and then say, hey, if you’re interested, let me know. And then take payment through Stripe or through PayPal or whatever.
Anthony Vicino:
I was like, It doesn’t need to be this overly complicated thing. And so we executed that less than 24 hours later. He had made two sales and had eight leads. So each sale was $2,500. So he made $5,000 with almost ten leads in reserve off of just one post in one day. Basic system, right? So we don’t need to overcomplicate this stuff, especially if you’re still in that, like, $5,000 a month range. You just need to focus more on getting customers, making offers, refining the product, and less time on all the different technologies and automations that you could be doing. Once you start scaling and you start bringing in team members, yes, you can start focusing on those things.
Anthony Vicino:
But it’s so easy, I think, just to get spinning your wheels and confuse motion for traction, right? Like you’re being busy but not effective. I think system design is one of those areas that I know personally, I am very guilty of diving into and justifying it as this is productive, when in reality, it’s just me not doing the work that needs to be done. Full stop. That’s all it is. So hope this brings some value to you. Do me a favor and just kind of review in your life. Where are those systems right now that you’re working on, that you think that you’re working on? Perfecting them rather than executing them. Define what that is, figure out what the bottleneck is, simplify the system, and then just go execute, please.
Anthony Vicino:
I want you to grow. I want to see you achieve your goals. And doing the thing is almost always the way. Doing more of the thing is almost always the way to achieve that. So hope this brings you guys some value. As always, thank you for being here. We’ll catch you back around these parts tomorrow, but until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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