 Tom here from Lawrence Systems, and I am a long-time tech enthusiast and for those of you that already follow my YouTube channel You know I talk a lot about a variety of different things Because I do some business videos and that's what this is and it's how I apply kind of the DevOps or system engineering thinking To business or at least specifically to my business I figure these analogies will ring well for those of you that are systems engineers or you know work in tech as well But first you like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems comm if you'd like to hire short Projectors a hires button right at the top if you want to support this channel in other ways There's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services We talk about on this channel including a link to our patreon if you like become a patreon supporter We also have a swag store where you can get shirts and other items that are for sale and that changes from time to time What's available and what's not so go ahead and check that out frequently And finally our forums if you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion about this video suggestions for new videos Or just reach out say hi and talk tech our forums are a great place for that all right now back to the Content I am a long-time tech enthusiast I have been playing with computers and working in the industry for over 20 years I've had this business for 17 years now There's a lot of different concepts in business and you can read a million different books on business and you may even find Conflicting ideas from different people who both found success with those ideas and that's because well There's a lot of different styles, but I want to talk about analogies that may ring true to I think a lot of my Audiences probably in the tech field so these are analogies that may help you understand it or at least Help you understand what I do here and a lot of my concept is applying the dev ops or systems Engineering thinking to business. What do I mean by that? Well, you wouldn't just store data on a single hard drive You're gonna put it on a rate array. You're going to come up with redundancies. You're gonna come up with processes and flows You're also not going to manually back up computers You're gonna create a process automation for that You're not going to put a bunch of computers that we have to manage under our MSP agreements and contracts and check in on them every day That's just inefficient and not a great way to run it and keeps you very busy and not any time to innovate if you do that So you create processes you buy software you create large levels of automation that same process works for business I take anything and manage by exceptions. What do I mean by that? Everything is a process procedure and until you have process procedures because this comes back to well I need a higher staff to do that you can't even hire staff if you don't have processes for them If not, they sit around twiddling your thumbs. I've talked about this before when you hire your staff I've got other business videos on this topic that well If they can't follow procedures or you can't write procedures for them You don't have you're not ready yet for having staff everything is about Process automation and figuring out how to free up your time now Some people like to be deeply busy and that's fine if you want to be deeply busy and involved in everything that's great But in this is my opinion that is very likely to hinder your growth because if you spend all the time Actually doing and programming and setting up and installing And never create a process by which someone else can follow for it Or every time a client calls you want to be the front line person talking to him every single time You're gonna have a growth. I have really worked hard over the years to constantly look and manage by exception Just like you do with a backup system. So the backups are just going and everything's great You got little green lights on the dashboard, you know, everything's good You've got whatever indicators you have and it's the same ones can apply to business and you manage by the one system That is having a problem you go. Oh that one didn't back up Why didn't so what can we do and of course you're looking at how can we stop that process from breaking again? The same thing applies to business I've created procedures for all of my staff for all of them in any one of them So any one of them knows what process to follow. What do you do in the phone rings? What do you do when a client wants this? What is the template you have to they go? Hey, I need to upgrade my Wi-Fi Well, all right, we have kits we have everything set up so they can quickly go alright This is how much a new wiring run is going to cost we're going to go out and quote it They know who to talk to to quote it They know who to talk to to get the wiring drop those process and procedures are Really important and there would allow me to have a lot more free time to spend time researching What products we should be using and I bring it up because like I'm looking over here I got the phones over here and how did I even choose these phones? Well, I chose what I think worked best for the phone systems for the phones We're going to use the process by which we sold it the way we do the pricing I'm constantly working on that And making sure it runs like a fine-to-machine And if there's any exceptions to it or if I don't think the you know the margins are right on it I'll make adjustments, but I don't get myself involved in the actual sitting down and programming all of them I may do it for a video and I do start with the high levels of things and then whittle them down to a process to make sure that All right, this is the process that my staff is going to follow But that's what's important is that I have time to do that. I probably only spend right now Roughly less than 20 hours a week actually doing things within my business Everything else is either making YouTube videos or just researching products and playing with technology because that's where my passion lies And what I really want to do and the outcomes of those is Evident, you know all the different YouTube videos I have or all the different new technologies my Staff is using or the new things are implementing and things. I've learned and ways we deploy I'm always so you know constantly innovating that is what's keeping our company very successful it's what keeps clients interested in us because we have new things that we can send to them that help bring Efficiency to their process as well and that's that whole DevOps thinking even my accounting I use a fully outsourced accounting firm This also helps with my business continuity planning because what happens if Tom doesn't spend 20 hours a week working on a business well, Tom can take some time off then the innovation stops for a little while, but Functionally the phone will still ring the payroll will happen the deposits will happen all those mundane processes I have just built automation around so even without me in the middle of it every day It still flows and that's an important thing that I think you should be working towards as a business owner Because if you're not working towards that You can't grow as a company. You can't innovate on product You can't stop and think are how do we do this better because you're too busy doing not thinking doing it better This is that old adage of you got to work on the business not in the business and the way you detach from that Is creating process automation so get out your DevOps hat just like you probably already had on and just take in apply those same concepts to your business and It will really once you start looking at it from that standpoint You're trying to put processes around there the people fall into place Once you start with that then you can start putting staff members in because well I know this process and you're following the process yourself You create the process which means you can then train someone to do that process That's what allows you to grow as a company That's what allows you to keep innovating It's what allows you to stay on top of things a lot better from an external perspective on the business and Generally, this is what keeps me really happy. I mean, I don't know if this is the right thing for you Maybe you're happy being absolutely busy and involved in every little detail in every little meeting micromanaging everything I do know people who seem to find great joy in that. I am as far from that person as possible I'm always like hey guys. Let me know how it went. Let me know how that sales job went I'm fine to manage that by exception I still do client interaction. I still enjoy talking to clients and things like that So it's not like I've removed myself completely I've still come so to speak the face of the business and I still do consulting work That I offer where people can hire me directly. I'm not 100% removed I don't want to be 100% moves. I do like a level of involvement I just don't like being the detailed person who sets up every single firewall and every single sale because well that would really inhibit growth of the company and The company is growing that's a status of us right now in May of 2020 things are going really well Not just for my YouTube channel. So thank you. Thank you for all of you who subscribe to it But also business wise things are going really well in these process and seizures have been working for me for a long time So I can leave lead a life that makes me both happy makes me some money I get to do some videos and share my knowledge with the world and get people, you know Excited about technology and new things I talk about as well have a good staff with a great atmosphere All the things I want I'm really thankful for all those things but they do require a lot of work and automation to keep it going Those are my thoughts on that and thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel Hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to Lawrence systems calm fill out our contact page And let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together On if you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums.laurance systems calm where we can carry on the discussion about this video Other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again, thanks for watching and see you next time