00:01.84
Andy Young
Welcome to the A25 Technologies Podcast. I’m Andy, founder and CEO here with Tim, our senior tech, the one, the only.
00:12.92
Andy Young
So, welcome, welcome.
00:15.11
Tim
Thank you.
00:16.12
Andy Young
Yes, today we are talking about something that is very, very, very, very very I’d add like 20 more, but don’t want to waste your time.
00:27.10
Andy Young
important things for successful businesses to rely on and that is really great systems.
00:34.98
Tim
Great systems. That’s right.
00:37.29
Andy Young
Yeah.
00:37.43
Tim
Systems are what would keep your businesses running smoothly, help you scale and make sure your team is always on the same page.
00:45.65
Andy Young
Yes, that is true. Google Docs also helps keep us on the same page. They are not the sponsor of this episode.
00:50.01
Tim
Yeah.
00:53.68
Andy Young
Let’s start with some basics here. Why are systems important?
00:59.75
Tim
Well, systems bring consistency. They make sure tasks are done the right way every time, help train new staff quickly, and protect your business from mistakes or lost knowledge when someone leaves.
01:12.03
Andy Young
Yes. And… feel like I beat the drum around here about security and compliance, but from that angle, documented systems make it easier to meet regulations.
01:22.26
Andy Young
So if you go through a SOX audit or a HIPAA audit, it keeping that data safe is important. And that’s something that we focus on in Bunker Cybersecurity.
01:32.07
Tim
Yeah.
01:35.67
Andy Young
So just so you know.
01:38.38
Tim
Right. I mean, mean, here’s, here’s what we
01:42.58
Andy Young
Yes.
01:43.27
Tim
Plan and prepare. Understand your current.
01:44.77
Andy Young
And this is for building, this is for building good systems, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
01:49.81
Tim
First of all, we want to plan and prepare, understand your current workflows and get your input from everyone’s involved. uh document everything write down processes create diagrams and clarify roles that’s a biggie uh and then we review improve so regularly check if your systems still fit your needs and then test before roll out make sure everything works suspected before going live
02:03.18
Andy Young
Yes.
02:16.96
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. That, that, uh, review and improve there, that, that andgoing ongoing ongoing, don’t know what ongoing is, but ongoing is important.
02:34.96
Tim
All the time.
02:28.45
Andy Young
Yeah. Continuing to do those reviews is really key because businesses change. You get new. Yeah. You get new products. You get new people, you get new clients, you get new laws, right?
02:41.03
Andy Young
And so your systems have to evolve with you and they can’t evolve unless you’re checking in on them. So.
02:49.35
Tim
Mm-hmm.
02:51.33
Andy Young
Well, we’re diving right in. So like if you’re expecting fluff at the beginning, it’s not happening. We don’t have time for fluff. We got to talk about systems. And a good system really doesn’t have a lot of fluff in it, right? It’s just there.
03:04.25
Tim
Right.
03:04.57
Andy Young
So yeah, that’s a good thing. There’s a a lot of different system frameworks out there. Which one, in your opinion, do you think helped businesses today kind of the most?
03:16.62
Tim
Well, here are a a few favorites. I mean, business model canvas helps you see all the key parts of your business at a glance.
03:25.46
Andy Young
Yeah, so like kind of a whiteboard scenario. Like you see everything, you know how they interact.
03:30.13
Tim
Right. Yeah, right.
03:31.46
Andy Young
that’s a great one. I love that. I like big meta pictures of what’s going on. Yeah. All right.
03:38.12
Tim
Yeah, like, well, people like to see more of the visual part of how it breaks down. i I like that. So another one is balanced score scorecard, let you track performance in areas like finance, customers and internal processes.
03:42.88
Andy Young
Yeah.
03:51.69
Andy Young
Ooh, that’s a good one, right? Because you can sit down with your leaders and start to create objective measures. And then there can be, know, honestly, I’d start with self-reporting in that scenario, right? Just let everybody self-report it.
04:06.95
Tim
Right.
04:07.22
Andy Young
And then you’ve got some metric to base decisions of this system is great or this system isn’t working and we’re failing. Yeah. So that’s cool.
04:17.61
Tim
Another one’s a togaf or togaf lines it with your business schools.
04:21.96
Andy Young
Yep. Exactly. So yeah, I think that’s good in the sense of these are the systems we’re using. These are the hardwares. These are, you know, our resource budget. What what we doing with it?
04:35.17
Andy Young
How is it fitting in with our systems and does it meet our system’s needs?
04:38.29
Tim
Right.
04:39.92
Andy Young
So it’s kind of interesting view there. Yeah.
04:42.78
Tim
And come around. We have the NIST cybersecurity framework to go to for managing and reducing cyber risk.
04:51.41
Andy Young
Yes. So NIST has been around for so long and they’re who keeps your clocks running on time. Right. So that’s fun.
05:00.46
Tim
That’s always real.
05:01.87
Andy Young
That’s kind of important. They also were tasked with, hey, this is the company or the, I guess, government entity that will be handling cybersecurity.
05:12.99
Andy Young
And this happened in the 80s, because the Internet was in its infancy, like real infancy.
05:14.91
Tim
Oh, go way back.
05:19.92
Andy Young
And so then they were like, well, OK, we’ll come up with some stuff here. And like, honestly, it shouldn’t be with them anymore. And that’s why SISA was spun up.
05:32.22
Andy Young
But then SISA just recently got gutted.
05:32.65
Tim
Oh.
05:35.47
Andy Young
still technically around, but so much got pulled back from it on the regulatory side. Anyway.
05:42.24
Tim
Wow.
05:43.16
Andy Young
That’s why cybersecurity is still under NIST, who sets our clocks. where that is important is they lay out, actually, it’s still pretty relevant way to make sure you’re secure, whether it’s actual physical, you know, security governance, you know, they set up areas and then within that.
06:01.39
Andy Young
But it’s a great jumping off point for systems for any business, I think so.
06:06.23
Tim
Right. It sounds like it. I mean, especially if you say how far back it goes in time back to the eighties, it’s like, how much has there really been re re looked at, you know, realign and everything.
06:12.53
Andy Young
Yeah.
06:17.83
Tim
And then look at other ones potential that are newer, that are able to fix things like that.
06:22.40
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah.
06:24.74
Tim
we do have another one to the visual way to map out the improved workflows.
06:27.84
Andy Young
Yes. The business process model and notation system. Yeah.
06:36.40
Andy Young
Yeah. So really it’s just like that whole visual workflow. Once again, like, Hey, what’s going on? Who’s doing what? How does this flow through? It’s good to know if there’s a bottleneck where the bottleneck is because your business will only ever run as fast as the slowest part, right?
06:50.95
Tim
As
06:56.42
Andy Young
You could improve everything around the bottleneck. You could improve processes before you could improve processes after it doesn’t matter. The bottleneck, wherever that part of that system breaks down will always be the slowest part. So that’s where the old BPMN comes in handy.
07:12.37
Andy Young
So
07:13.40
Tim
I say, if you have a perfect business, I’m like, well, I’m very proud of you guys.
07:18.24
Andy Young
yeah, right. Well, Hey, well, we’ll move on here and let’s talk just briefly here and get practical Tim and let’s get practical on
07:28.18
Tim
Oh.
07:31.18
Andy Young
What are maybe the top three ways to create and document systems in really simple terms?
07:37.82
Tim
Yeah, absolutely. Here’s the E.L.I. five version. So number one, draw it out. Visual mapping like a treasure map uses pictures and arrows of show every step in process so everyone can see how things connect.
07:51.48
Andy Young
Dude, it would be great if you called it the treasure map.
07:54.46
Tim
Treasure map.
07:56.19
Andy Young
Welcome to our company. Let us start by explaining to you this treasure map. I like that, man.
08:02.79
Tim
but here’s the X, get to it.
08:02.80
Andy Young
That’s great.
08:04.61
Tim
yeah
08:05.75
Andy Young
It’s beautiful.
08:07.35
Andy Young
All right.
08:08.31
Tim
ah ah Number two, write it down. Step-by-step guidelines. So like a receipt, write out each step so everyone can follow along and get the same results every time.
08:19.16
Andy Young
Nice. That’s really, that’s a hard one because there’s, you’d think it would be anybody can follow the same, like the same recipe.
08:28.26
Tim
Guidelines, right?
08:30.86
Andy Young
But not always. You know, that’s one where…
08:32.63
Tim
That’s true.
08:39.79
Andy Young
so
08:42.68
Tim
we have our third one, take it out, collaborative ah documentation. Like group projects, everyone has ideas and updates in one share place, so instructions stay current and easy to find.
08:55.15
Andy Young
Yes. This, I think, is a really large if you’re working in a fast evolving industry.
09:06.42
Andy Young
And if, if you’ve got a really hard problem, I think this is good. It’s really nice.
09:12.79
Tim
Yeah, if you don’t get anywhere, if you talk it out, don’t talk it out.
09:13.24
Andy Young
Or if you’re trying to cross train.
09:17.47
Andy Young
Yeah. But, you know, the cross training, you to write it down, you almost have to have every person write it down and then come back and talk out everybody’s write it down. So then you can see like, well, I just assumed everybody knew that you did X, Y, Z.
09:27.74
Tim
Right.
09:32.12
Andy Young
I didn’t know we needed to document that. Right. So.
09:34.33
Tim
What are you doing over there, John, sitting at the table?
09:35.65
Andy Young
Yeah.
09:38.03
Tim
Yeah.
09:38.79
Andy Young
Yeah. And, you know, really, like there’s, I’d say great companies use a mix of all three of those. You know, that’s the only way you’re going to these systems that are clear, that are consistent, and that are always improving, right? I don’t think there’s any other way.
09:53.96
Andy Young
So…
09:54.79
Tim
Right.
09:56.05
Andy Young
Yeah. I know that we spend… I’m making an assumption. think we spend a lot of time on trying to develop systems.
10:07.85
Andy Young
I think sometimes we spend more time developing them than we follow them. We forget that they’re there.
10:13.21
Tim
Let’s try it out.
10:15.55
Andy Young
But there is something wonderful. It is like a treasure map in some ways when you rediscover an old system and you’re man, why did ever leave this behind?
10:23.35
Andy Young
We shouldn’t have orphaned.
10:23.80
Tim
Oh, yeah.
10:24.43
Andy Young
This was a good system.
10:24.72
Tim
I remember we do that a lot. Five years in the future, and they X marks the spot.
10:27.16
Andy Young
Yeah, we do do that lot, don’t we? Oh, well.
10:32.27
Tim
Back we go.
10:33.81
Andy Young
Yep.
10:36.09
Tim
yeah.
10:36.06
Andy Young
Exactly.
10:38.10
Tim
How 825 technologies and partners can help. So if you need help building security or optimizing your systems, we got you covered. uh, MSP and it t projects, uh, eight to five technologies.
10:52.49
Tim
can help you design, implement and support your business systems. Um, Another Another thing we can do web hosting, marketing, ah ah SEO, cheap.designstudios, build your digital presence on strong systems.
11:07.13
Tim
And then our last thing, compliance and cybersecurity. Bucker cybersecurity delivers virtual CIO services, coaching, and frameworks to keep your business secure and compliant.
11:17.77
Andy Young
That’s right. So if you’re ready to level up your systems with better or your business, if you’re ready to level up your business with better systems, that’s what you should do.
11:24.92
Tim
and Don’t forget treasure map too.
11:26.67
Andy Young
You should do that.
11:27.40
Tim
Yep.
11:28.47
Andy Young
Yeah. And if you’re doing that, just call us, reach out to us, let us know. We’ll help you. Yeah. Is there, can you think back? I I’m thinking back here, actually. I know that there’ve been a ah good number of companies that, that we’ve helped with systems.
11:44.16
Andy Young
But I think some of the most rewarding things, in my mind is when we go and we’re able to look at the way somebody’s doing something and we’re able to say, Hey, this technology would allow you to do the same thing.
12:00.01
Andy Young
And you’d be wiping out these huge monthly costs. You’d be getting something more stable and you’d be saving.
12:04.10
Tim
Mm, yes.
12:07.34
Andy Young
Like when we get into that sweet spot where we’re saving somebody or a company like five to 20 hours a week, like, That’s that is celebratory stuff.
12:17.94
Andy Young
That’s awesome stuff.
12:18.83
Tim
It’s very significant.
12:18.86
Andy Young
And yeah, and I think that’s the power of systems.
12:20.05
Tim
Yeah.
12:22.48
Andy Young
People don’t do them. And as a result, it’s this slow creep of responsibilities. And all of a sudden you’re like, how am I going to get everything done? Well, you know, you you make a system.
12:34.89
Andy Young
And yeah, I’ll tell you what’s nuts.
12:35.32
Tim
That’s true.
12:38.75
Andy Young
in the last year the systems that i’ve built for my personal life the numbers of them that i have been able to automate with ai where even my systems that are simple take even less time or take no time and i just get a report emailed to me because that’s the way it set up it’s wild so
12:48.77
Tim
Oh, yeah.
12:56.92
Tim
That’s awesome.
12:59.71
Tim
Yeah. How much is make help you how much time it takes away? i mean,
13:04.40
Andy Young
yeah
13:04.54
Tim
And how much research you had to do before. It’s crazy.
13:08.92
Andy Young
Yeah. I’ll tell you too, the other thing that’s dangerous is you get into system making, right? You’re like, I’m going to start building systems. I have a system that I have built for home maintenance and it is, it kind of makes my neighbors, I think, feel like they’re not doing enough.
13:16.24
Tim
Hmm.
13:19.81
Tim
Hmm. Hmm.
13:26.67
Andy Young
And that’s not at all the purpose of this system. Okay. you know, you’ve got all these weekends in the year. And most of the time we try to get everything done in maybe four weekends out of the whole year, two in the in in spring and two in fall.
13:40.73
Andy Young
And those weekends are long and you don’t get to spend a lot of time with your family and this and that.
13:40.76
Tim
Right.
13:45.22
Andy Young
So I’ve kind of broken them down. And my goal was, I don’t want to spend any more than an hour two hours, any weekend on home maintenance.
13:55.99
Tim
That’s good.
13:57.05
Andy Young
Yeah. And the result of it is sometimes on Wednesday night is when it’ll be like, change your furnace filter. Right. And I buy them up front. I’ve got a reminder that says go buy four furnace filters.
14:08.15
Andy Young
And I always do it in the spring because that’s when they’re on sale. I got a four pack at Costco for 35 bucks. Right.
14:14.44
Tim
That’s pretty good.
14:14.45
Andy Young
I know. So you’re able to use the system to like prime the pump of when is the best time to buy this stuff.
14:22.59
Tim
Right.
14:22.65
Andy Young
You know, like I know to buy mulch early and have it delivered later.
14:26.90
Tim
True.
14:27.54
Andy Young
Yeah, there’s all of these little things and, you know, it adds up. I mean, this year I saved 20% on mulch. Hey, that’s not bad.
14:35.20
Tim
It’s a win.
14:35.57
Andy Young
And I got 11% back from Menards.
14:38.49
Tim
Minard’s.
14:40.08
Andy Young
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I think that they’re pretty cool. Is there a system that you enjoy, like car, you know, washing, maintenance or anything?
14:49.61
Tim
Oh yeah. I mean, like you said, like I like to have everything scheduled and like I’m up to do is kind of thing, you know, once a monthly, you know, like you said, you’re doing a range of active replace furniture stuff like that, you know, wash the cars, you know, sweet. Don’t forget to sweep this area.
15:05.40
Tim
Check, check, make sure we’re getting everything fine for the kids for the week, you know, like to have a good system. Absolutely.
15:14.82
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, dude, they’re pretty useful. So I would say as we close out, number one, great job, Tim. I feel like I know more about systems thanks to you.
15:26.19
Tim
I do too.
15:27.00
Andy Young
So I think, you know, like I’ve learned if you want to drive in your organization consistency and growth and resilience, look for systems that frameworks and best practices, those types of systems are a great way to structure the approach to systems.
15:41.16
Tim
Mm-hmm.
15:45.13
Andy Young
I think I learned to invest in a whiteboard or a whiteboard program. There seems to be a lot of systems where you need to draw it or write it down or collaborate to make sure that the system’s documented and accessible. So I’d say those are good things to do.
15:58.68
Andy Young
That’d be funny if you had a whiteboard library, right? You just like pull out, it’s just August of 2024, it’s just a whiteboard. so And then the other thing I did i learn is that technologies,
16:12.46
Andy Young
We’re here to help every step of the way when it comes to systems.
16:15.41
Tim
That’s right.
16:16.05
Andy Young
yeah, I think that about does it, doesn’t it?
16:18.03
Tim
Yeah, I was going to say, if we had like 1980s, like chalkboard. One second. Mm-hmm.
16:24.57
Andy Young
It’d be funny. Yeah. Yeah. So, hey, be sure to subscribe for more expert tips. Spotify, Apple, leave us comments. Give us some ratings, preferably five star. we don’t want any one star ratings, right? Like if you don’t like it, just don’t listen again or don’t subscribe yet.
16:42.07
Andy Young
Or four. I guess we could take some fours, I guess. But we prefer five.
16:44.52
Tim
We can take four.
16:45.45
Andy Young
If you like it, let us know you love it.
16:46.52
Tim
Four and a half sounds better than four.
16:48.66
Andy Young
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Yeah. And then also let us know if there’s any topics you want to hear about. So we’re here to listen. Yep. So thanks for listening to the 825 Technology Podcast.
16:57.14
Tim
That’s right.
