Businesses are quite literally their own systems and what systems they have in place. I’ve mentioned this before, but what is a business like Mc Donald’s? It is essentially a business that has a system developed around creating and selling hamburgers at lightning fast speeds.
The systems that Mc Donald’s uses are quite incredible because they can open up a new franchise or business location at the drop of a hat. Why? Because their systems and processes can easily be duplicated and replicated without a problem. There is no guesswork (aside from their market research which is a different topic for later).
If Mc Donald’s decided to open a store down the street from you, they could do it with crazy efficiency. There is no deviation either. A Mc Donald’s is a Mc Donald’s. They all for the most part have the same menu and create all of their items in the same fashion.
Businesses Need Systems and Processes That Can Be Duplicated and Leveraged
Internet Businesses more so than anything are the perfect example of business systems and processes working. It doesn’t matter if you have an ecommerce store, an information product or anything else.
The goal is always the same: build a reliable and scaleable method that can deliver your products, goods and services to your target audience. If you sell physical products or goods, you must have a system developed to display your products, collect payment information and then deliver the “goods”. The same holds true with services or just about anything else.
All Internet businesses must excel at doing this. I can’t even count how many times I’ve done client or coaching work where people didn’t have the correct systems and processes build around their goods and services and this automatically will lead to failure.
You must take the guesswork out of doing business. Know what your products and services are and then create an efficient machine to sell them with. Try to model your business after something like a Mc Donald’s or a Burger King (even if you hate their product, it’s hard to argue with their systems and processes behind how they sell).
Take Action to Build Your Business and It’s Systems
You always hear you must take action. So do it. There, simple, isn’t it? If you already are, then good, keep taking more action. I can understand that fear is the biggest killer of action, however, let me share a simple bit of advice:
As you get out there and take action on growing your business, you can actually create business systems and processes that are inherently designed to reduce risk and bring it under an acceptable level. Let me just say one thing here, I had a great Management professor once at NYU (thank you, Professor Seely) who said this, “Your job as a manager is never to believe that you can completely eliminate risk, instead, you must bring it under control to acceptable levels”.
How do you bring risk under control and to acceptable levels? By making sure that your systems and processes are established in this way. I will argue that you will never gather the correct knowledge that YOU specifically need to control risk in YOUR business until you get out there and actually DO it. Nobody knows your business like you do, so you must figure out by taking action to build your business as to what works the best.
If you are afraid of taking action because you are afraid of the risk or failure, then you either need to seriously re-evaluate what you are attempting to do, partner with others who are talented or become fearless in your mindset.