The Start of Systemisation (+Free Template)

Quick test: Your spouse gets an urgent call from your biggest client at 3am. You're unconscious in hospital.

Can they:

No? Congratulations. You've built a job that dies with you.

You can't even take a proper holiday without your phone because everything lives in your head. You're not running a business, mate. You're a highly paid hostage to your own creation.

The fix isn't some 200-page operations manual that you'll never update. It's one page. One bloody page that could save your business (and probably your sanity).

Forget everything you've heard about business plans. This isn't that. This is the "break glass in emergency" document that makes you replaceable (in the good way).

The Profile is five sections. One page. Here's what goes in:

One-Sentence Model: I help [specific who] achieve [specific outcome] through [your method]

Bad: "I provide business solutions"
Good: "I help overwhelmed dentists automate patient booking so they focus on drilling teeth, not managing calendars"

Value Proposition: The expensive problem you solve. Why you vs the other guy.

Target Market: Who actually pays you. Look at your last 10 invoices. See a pattern? Write that down.

Draw three boxes with arrows between them:

INPUTS → What you need to create value (client gives you X, you need access to Y)

VALUE CREATION → Your 5-7 core processes (not tasks, PROCESSES)

→ OUTPUTS: What the client gets (tangible + intangible)

This map? That's your entire business model. If you can't draw it, you don't understand your business.

Services: What you ACTUALLY sell (check those invoices again)
Tech Stack: The 5-10 tools that would kill your business if they disappeared
Info Architecture: Where everything lives (files, passwords, templates)

Don't list every tool. Just the "business stops without this" ones.

How Did Papaya Slash Support Costs Without Adding Headcount?

When Papaya saw support tickets surge, they faced a tough choice: hire more agents or risk slower service. Instead, they found a third option—one that scaled their support without scaling their team.

The secret? An AI-powered support agent from Maven AGI that started resolving customer inquiries on day one.

With Maven AGI, Papaya now handles 90% of inquiries automatically - cutting costs in half while improving response times and customer satisfaction. No more rigid decision trees. No more endless manual upkeep. Just fast, accurate answers at scale.

The best part? Their human team is free to focus on the complex, high-value issues that matter most.

👉 Curious how they did it? Read the full case study to learn how Papaya transformed their customer support

Revenue Streams: How money comes in (be specific - amount, terms, frequency)
Cost Structure: Fixed vs variable (mapped to processes)
Real Hourly Rate: What you actually make after ALL costs

That hourly rate will probably make you cry. Good. Now you know what to fix.

The "If Nothing Else" List: 3 things someone MUST do to prevent disaster

Critical Relationships: Your top 3 clients + why they're special
Access Protocols: How someone gets into your systems without you

The test: Could someone run your business for a week with just this document? If no, add what's missing. If it's more than one page, you're overcomplicating it.

I learned this lesson the expensive way. Like everything else worth knowing.

It’s 2021. Running a process consulting firm. Helping other businesses document their operations while mine ran entirely on memory and coffee. The irony wasn't lost on me, but I was "too busy" to fix it.

Then I got proper sick. Not flu sick. Hospital sick.

My business nearly died. Not because clients left (they were surprisingly patient), but because I'd built a complex machine that only I could operate. My VA couldn't help - she didn't know what I did. My wife couldn't help - she simply wasn’t across what I was doing for clients.

I had documentation, sure. Scattered across Google Docs with helpful names like "New Process v3 FINAL FINAL (use this one)."

When I got back, I had to rebuild half my systems from memory. Lost two clients. Nearly lost my biggest one. All because I was too clever to write down the obvious stuff.

The sad part was it would have taken 90 minutes to prevent all of it. Ninety. Minutes.

The Profile I created after that disaster? Still use it. Update it quarterly. Takes 20 minutes now because I'm just tweaking, not creating. It's ugly. It's boring. It works.

Last year, took a two-week holiday. Proper holiday. Phone off.

You know what's not sexy? Documentation.
You know what's even less sexy? Being chained to your business forever.

The Profile isn't about systems or optimisation or any of that wank. It's about freedom. The freedom to get sick without panic. The freedom to take a holiday without your phone. The freedom to sell your business someday because it's actually worth something without you.

Are you ready to face the truth? You're avoiding this because writing it down makes it real. Makes it small. Makes you confront that your "complex" business is actually five processes and some admin.

Good. Simplicity is the goal. Complexity is just confusion with a university degree.

One page. Five sections. Ninety minutes.

Stop pretending you're too special to document. You're not. And that's exactly why this will work.

You can get started today in this template.

Next week: Now that you've mapped your value flow in the Profile, we turn one of those process boxes into Process documentation. From 30,000 feet to ground level.

P.S. - If you're thinking "I'll do this later," you won't. Open a document right now. Type "Business Profile" at the top. Even that's better than nothing.

Enjoy this post, refer new subscribers and get the Time Flux Method - what I use to help people save 2+ hours a day.