Callum Birch

How to systematise any business

One of the biggest risks of buying a business is owner dependence.

In other words, there's a risk that the new team won't know how to produce the results that made the business valuable in the first place.

That's why savvy investors look for systematised businesses - and why savvy entrepreneurs build to sell.

With that in mind, a few years ago, I documented everything that gets done in the medical practice that my wife and I own.

And in this article I'll show you how I systematised a critical business process for a company I admire.

Here's are the nuts-and-bolts of how I systematised Ship 30 for 30's content strategy and how you can do the same for any of your business processes.

Step 1: Extract the raw material

Dickie and Nicolas wrote a blog post about the content strategy they used to grow their email list to 100k.

The article is transparent about what they do and when, so I knew I could create a system from it without their permission or collaboration.

Most businesses don’t have any systems documented in blog posts. But that’s fine! Because there’s an easy way to get going...

Simply record someone performing the activity you want to document (on your phone or a screen recording using Loom or similar).

Then transcribe the recording.

And Bob’s your uncle.

You have the raw material for your system.

Watch me go through this process for Ship 30.

Step 2: Build the systems

I found that the content strategy in the blog post actually contained 5 processes:

  1. Publish short social posts
  2. Share a screenshot of a tweet on LinkedIn
  3. Publish a Twitter thread/long-form LinkedIn post
  4. Schedule asset “plugs” on social media
  5. Re-publish the best content on social media

So I sorted through all of the raw materials, figured out what system it belonged to, and began to organise it accordingly.

Most of the info in the blog post was valuable for people who might want to “steal” their content system, but not especially helpful for an employee tasked with following the system on a daily basis.

So I deleted a lot of irrelevant stuff and organised the rest of it into my systems template:

Watch me do this for Ship 30.

Step 3: Organise the systems

Next, I chose two pieces of software:

  1. To document the systems

I currently use plain text files, organised into folders, saved in Dropbox. It's platform-independent, simple, and searchable. That said, when I did this piece of work, I was using Workflowy, which is very similar to my current setup but with a more user-friendly interface. If using plain text files horrifies you, consider using whatever tech stack you already have in place. For example, you could use Google Docs or Word. My advice: keep it simple and keep it separate from your task management tool.

  1. To assign tasks

Next, choose a task management tool. This will tell everyone in your business who does what, by when. There are plenty of options. Todoist, Trello, Asana. If you're not sure where to start and/or you're on a budget, use Asana. It's free, easy to use, and scalable.

But here's a warning: don't use a single piece of software for systems and project management.

Here's why.

Project management software is for getting things done.

Systems software is for viewing reference materials.

Day-to-day, your team don't need to see the details of how and why to do something. They just need enough information to get the job done well - with a short checklist at most - in task management software.

So it's best to keep the two separate, but provide a link to the full system, so they always have the option to view it without being overwhelmed by it when they're in action mode.

It may not seem like it on the surface, but it’s much easier to actually implement the systems (and convince your employees to) when you separate the detailed systems and keep day-to-day project management super simple.

Watch me organise the systems into Workflowy and assign tasks in Asana.

Step 4: Test and improve the systems

By definition, the purpose of a process is to generate a result.

It's best if the result is consciously chosen, rather than passively accepted.

Then you can measure how effective it is at producing the desired result. And you can test process changes to try and generate the same result for less investment of time, energy and capital, with a lower risk.

This was a permissionless project so I didn't have the luxury of testing changes.

But that's what I'd recommend after doing the foundational work of systematising your business.