Whittle Down Your Workday - 6 Steps To Making Your Business Run Itself
by Natalie Troyer

Sam Carpenter has most likely been in your Dockers.

Eight years ago, he was working long hours for meager pay, constantly under stress, and had no time for himself or his family. The president and CEO of Centratel, a struggling Telephone Answering Service business, Sam might as well have been working a per-hour job. Putting in 80- to 100-hour workweeks, he was simply trying to keep his business afloat. His body was a wreck from the stress, and his doctor, convinced he was depressed, had him on Prozac and then Ritalin. On top of all this, he was also the single parent of two children for 15 years.

Five days before he was going to miss payroll for the first time, and ultimately lose his business, Sam had a breakthrough epiphany. He realized that his life and business problems did not require "holistic" solutions. He realized that those "primary" systems are made up of linear "sub"-systems that can be fixed and then perfected one at a time. When the sub-systems were working perfectly, he reasoned, the primary systems would also work perfectly. Thus, the result would be holistic. So, at once, he grabbed hold of the reins on his business, health, and relationships, and began to extract and optimize each sub-system and then reinsert it back into the mix. The improvement was drastic.

Now, the author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More, Sam works a mere two hours a week, runs a multi-million dollar company once on the brink of folding, and he makes more in a month now than he used to make in a year. He is of robust health - climbing, cycling and skiing again. He owns a second home and travels, and recently remarried the "woman of his dreams."

Follow Sam's six steps to "working less and making more," and watch your own business or corporate management position become more efficient, your workweek lessen, and your income skyrocket:

1. Change your fundamental perspective of the mechanics of the world. Take a position "outside and slightly above" your job, your small business, and your life. See that your job, business, and life are composed of linear systems and that these systems can be perfected, one-by-one. Understand that by perfecting a primary system's sub-systems, the primary system will be perfected.

2. Understand there is a universal propensity for perfection: 99.9% of everything works just fine - life wants things to work out; you just have to "climb on board." Honestly, there's probably not much that needs fixing.

3. Stop playing Whac-a-Mole. End the fire-killing. Instead of stomping out fires as they arise, dig down deep, identify the problems, fix the systems that cause them, and stop problems before they reoccur.

4. Create documentation. It has to happen. It's the single greatest difference between large successful businesses and small struggling businesses. Create a strategic objective, operating principles and working procedures for your job or your business.

5. Make sure you're in a position of advancement. If you look upward, and there's no rung on the ladder for you to feasibly reach, consider switching jobs; or, find a small business that's struggling, buy it, and fix it. To attain freedom, you must be in a position where upward mobility and management is possible.

6. Hire people who "get it." You must employ people who agree with your philosophy and methodology and who see the value in documentation and written procedures. If your employees aren't on the same page as you, don't expect to get the results you want.

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