Skip your way to business success

Transcript

So I’m standing in my garage at 6am holding a skipping rope like it owes me money. Haven’t touched one of these things since year eight PE class where Mrs. Henderson made us do it for quote unquote Cardiovascular Fitness.

25 years later, here I am again. Why? Because some fitness guru online said it’s the most efficient cardio you can do. And I love efficient. It’s also backed up by research.

First attempt, rope hits my shins. Second attempt, tangles around my ankles like I’m being arrested by sporting goods.

Third attempt, I actually get three skips in before the rope tries to assassinate me from behind my neck. And that’s when it hit me. This is exactly like systemizing your business. Painful, clumsy, makes you want to quit, but absolutely worth sticking with.

I’m your host, Mike Fox, and this is Lone Wolf Unleashed. Today we’re talking about practice. Not the sexy kind of business advice where everything clicks immediately.

The grind it out, get slightly better each day kind that actually works. Let me paint a picture of my current skipping prowess. I can do maybe 15 skips before the rope decides to rebel.

My footwork looks like someone’s controlling me with a broken PlayStation controller. The rhythm. What rhythm? I’m basically just jumping and hoping physics doesn’t notice. Here’s the thing. I’m already better than I was last week.

Last week, I could barely do five. The week before that, I couldn’t untangle the bloody rope without googling how to unknot skipping rope.

This is the bit nobody talks about with business systems. Everyone wants to show their polished automated money printing machine.

Nobody shows you the garage footage of them whipping themselves in the face with their own processes. Your first attempt at systemizing your business will be exactly like my first skip lesson. Awkward, frustrating, and you’ll probably hurt yourself.

You’ll try to map out your client onboarding process and realize you don’t actually have one. You just wing it every time and hope for the best.

You’ll attempt to automate your invoicing and somehow end up sending the same client 17 reminders for a bill they already paid. I’ve been there. Hell, I’ve been the guy who built a complex project management system that took longer to update than actually do the work.

That’s like trying to skip rope while simultaneously solving a Rubik’s Cube. Ambitious, but stupid. Here’s what I’ve learned about both skipping and systems. Consistency beats intensity every single time.

I don’t need to skip for an hour straight. I just need to skip for five minutes every Day. Same with your business systems. You don’t need to automate everything overnight.

You need to systemise one tiny thing each week. So here’s a plan. Week one, stop rewriting the same email from scratch every time.

Create three template responses you actually inquiry, acknowledgement, project, update, Invoice, follow up. Five minutes to set up saves 20 minutes every day. Week two, write down your standard questions for discovery calls.

Not a fancy form yet, just a list on your desk. So you stop forgetting to ask about budget until the very end, like an amateur.

Week three, now that you know what questions matter, turn that list into a simple intake form. Suddenly, clients are giving you the info up front instead of you playing detective on every call. See the pattern?

Small, boring, actually useful improvements. After two weeks of skipping, something weird happened. My feet started knowing where to be without my brain getting involved.

The rope rhythm became less like the Swedish chef wrestling spaghetti. Same thing happens with business systems. After a month of following your standardized quote process, you stop thinking about it.

Your fingers know which template to use, which questions to ask, and how to structure the pricing. That mental energy you used to waste figuring out the same problems over and over.

Now it’s free to work on actual business growth instead of administrative archaeology. The beautiful thing about practice is it compounds my skipping went from call an ambulance to mildly embarrassing to actually looks like exercise.

Over just a few weeks, your systems can do the same thing. First system you build might save you 30 minutes a week. That’s not life changing, but it’s not nothing either.

The second system builds on the first, saves another hour. The third system leverages both previous ones. Suddenly you’ve got half a day back. Before you know it, you’re the person taking actual weekends.

Not working from the couch in your pyjamas. Weekends, proper phone on silent, don’t even think about emails. Weekends. Here’s where most people stuff it up.

They want their first system to be perfect, like wanting to skip rope like a boxer on day one. I spent three years trying to build a perfect client management system.

I researched every tool, watched every tutorial, mapped every possible scenario. You know what I ended up with? A spreadsheet. A really good spreadsheet that I actually use, but still just a spreadsheet.

Meanwhile, my mate Dave created a basic checklist in Google Docs and freed up six hours a week. His system wasn’t perfect, but it was done. And done beats perfect every single time. So here’s your homework. And I mean actually do this.

Don’t just nod along and forget about it. Pick one thing you do repetitively in your business. Something boring and administrative that you hate. Client onboarding.

Sending invoices, project kickoffs. Whatever. Document how you currently do it. Not how you should do it. Not the idealised version. How you actually do it when nobody’s watching.

Write it down, step by painful step. Then ask yourself which step takes the longest. Which step do you forget about most often?

Which step makes you want to throw your laptop out the window? Fix one of those things. Not all of them. 1. Make it slightly less painful, slightly more consistent, slightly more automated. That’s it.

That’s your system. Ugly, imperfect, but real. I’m not going to pretend that in six months I’ll be skipping rope like Rocky Balboa. But I’ll be better than I am today.

Probably won’t need to Google how to untangle skipping rope anymore. Maybe I’ll even look like I know what I’m doing. And here’s the key.

I’m not comparing myself to the fitness influencer on Instagram doing double unders blindfolded. I’m comparing myself to the guy who couldn’t skip three times without nearly strangling himself. That’s the the only comparison that matters.

Your business systems are the same long game. You’re not building the next Amazon overnight. You’re just trying to work one less hour this week than last week. Take one less stupid meeting.

Send one less just checking in email because your process already handled it. Don’t measure yourself against the Productivity guru with 17 virtual assistants and a color coded calendar that looks like a NASA mission plan.

Compare yourself to last month’s version of you, the one who was manually typing the same email for the hundredth time. Small improvements, consistently applied over a long period of time. It’s not sexy, but it works. Practice isn’t glamorous.

Whether it’s skipping rope or systemizing your business, you’re going to look like an amateur for longer than you’d like. But here’s the thing about being bad at something. It’s temporary. If you keep showing up, the rope will stop hitting your shins.

The systems will stop feeling like extra work. The practice becomes the process, and the process becomes automatic. And once it’s automatic, you get your life back.

Start ugly, stay consistent, get slightly better each week. Your future self, the one taking actual holidays without checking emails. Well, thank you. Now go untangle something in your business.

Preferably not literally. And I wanted to say thank you for listening today.

There’s a million other podcasts you could have been listening to, but you decided to hang out with me and learn about how practicing systems makes perfect. And for that, I wanted to say thank you. I’m your host, Mike. This has been Lone Wolf Unleashed.

And I’ll catch you next week when I’ll probably have a few new bruises.