People are approaching optimizations completely wrong
A quick guide on what you can do about it to make your business succeed
If you’re aware of optimizations then you’re not completely wrong. Awareness is the first step to improvement after all. But there is a reason why many entrepreneurs and businesses have yet to adopt modern technology.
We have been indoctrinated by our success driven society to believe that we must follow the approach from other people who are successful. This is completely false. There is a very simple reason that this cannot work.
We are all unique people, with unique skills, emotions and drivers. I cannot follow Steve Jobs' approach, because I am not Steve Jobs. You cannot emulate someone who is successful without making the habits your own.
We have been made to believe that the right question to ask is: “Who do I want to become?” When instead you must ask: “Who am I?”
When you ask “Who Do I Want To Be?” you forget about human nature
When I just started out my career I was fully committed to all the self improvement propaganda. I read the books, studied the successful stories and began adopting their habits and approaches. But nothing lasted.
I was not able to scale anything I tried for the long term. The reason is simple: None of the approaches fit who I was. You can wake up at 5am all you want, because some famous motivational ex-military person does it, but if that isn’t you, it will not work.
And the same logic applies to business. I kept asking who do I want this company to be modeled after? This inevitably led to processes and workflows (habits) that we could not sustain, because the individuals executing my proposed strategy didn’t like them and so the company didn’t like them.
This is the mindset that leads us to building out systems from the top down instead of the bottom up. We focus on a big wonderful system that is perfect for this business and never bother to find out who the individuals executing it actually are.
This is how I failed in the beginning. I build workflows for clients who have to learn a new system. This alienated the employees who thought: “oh great another consultant who knows better than us”, which then in turn also created distrust with their management team for hiring me in the first place.
Failing on that level was painful. I took it personally, issued refunds where applicable and doubted myself. I was not always the confident system architect I am now and at that time I was at a low point.
The Question You Must Ask Is “Who Am I?”
Over time I came to realize that forcing myself to adapt to habits is a bad approach. The epiphany came to me at the gym. The cliche starting point for all habits.
For the longest time I was at the gym with my former boss at 5:30am. That is when he went, he was jacked, so it must be working. The problem was that I was at my sharpest in the morning. For who I was, the gym at 5:30 was counter productive.
When I realized that working out for me was best done in the afternoon, I realized oh my god. I should not adapt myself around other people's habits. I need to build habits around me.
So I started doing my automation work in the morning (No AI yet at that time), because it felt right. And I went to the gym and played tennis with my dad in the afternoon, because it gave me another energy boost I could use until about 7pm.
But this article is not about my gym routine. It is about businesses and how they can be more efficient. So let me bring this full circle.
Lasing Business Optimizations Begin By Finding Out Who The People Are
When you transpose the question who am I to a business it works the exact same way. Some people simply like to use a certain application. Some people prefer to organize a calendar one way, other people another way. There are countless examples of this.
We are all unique individuals with our own preferences. When businesses think about optimizing they almost always start with a grand vision, some amazing examples and give talks and speeches to their staff about productivity. If you want to spend a lot of money without success, that is the way to go.
Instead, you need to talk to employees every day. Find out who they are. Ask them how they feel about their work, their day to day tasks and make it part of your culture to receive honest answers. That is the absolute most important and best optimization you can ever do.
Once you receive honest feedback, you will find so many places where you can optimize your entire company. It is so logical when you think about it. Jack works in the office. Jack has to talk to the customers and work with them directly. Jack is a person with feelings. Optimize Jack's process and you optimized part of the business.
Knowing That You Can Optimize Is The Second Half Of The Battle
The other thing that often bites businesses in the efficiency butt is that they do the above, they find out Jack would love it if they could adjust process A, but now what? Now what often is simply a lack of knowledge. They just don’t know you can actually do something about it.
Let me unequivocally tell you: 90% of the time you can do something about it. Google it. Ask ChatGPT about it. Gosh with AI available now, the world of optimization is literally at your fingertips. It is not isolated to programmers or people like me. You can do it too.
If you combine ChatGPT, Gemini or Claud, whichever LLM you want, with some reading and YouTube you can find out in 10 minutes if you can optimize a workflow. It just takes the will to do it. ChatGPT can even teach you how to do it and implement it. And if that is too much or you’re too busy, then you just talk to someone like myself.
The investment into optimization is so low compared to the return, many business owners just don’t know it’s possible.
Ever Since I Adjusted My Question, I Created Happiness Around Me
Yes, happiness. This is not an exaggeration. Employee satisfaction with their job is arguably the highest driver of efficiency for a company. Why do you think small startups can beat big companies? Because the entire team is all in on one goal with one single mission.
But this is not unique to startups in tech. This is just humans sharing in something and wanting the best for the collective. You can re-create that culture with my approach. Make your employees happy and they will be more efficient. It is so dumb simple that many don’t seem to do it.
Focus on the following:
Reduce daily stress
Eliminate tedious tasks
Remove repetition from work
Make your employees a bit happier each day
If you search for your answers with that goalset, you will succeed. And then just use AI and YouTube to optimize what you find. Yes, it takes time. But everything worthwhile does. But if it ends up saving you $150,000 a year or even $250,000 a year, why in the world would you not do it? Yes, those are actual numbers of my clients, cross my heart and hope to die.
The Only Tools You Need To Succeed In Optimization
ChatGPT or some other LLM
YouTube
Curiosity
A drive to make your business better
Of course this will eventually lead you down to:
Zapier
N7N
AI Agents
There are 100s of tutorials, 100s of websites to read and the only thing standing in the way is your team's culture and approach. But yes, people are busy focusing on the operation. Well then you can call me or someone like me. That is why we have been running successful businesses for 10 plus years. This stuff works.