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It involves a genie! The most important output of your company is not profit, free cash flow or even satisfied customers. It's what your company provides to you - the owner. Why is that the most important? Because it's why…

Does that sound contradictory? Read on. A business owner writes "I would like to eliminate all job duties from my plate and have the business run itself." Many of us want that too. And often learning about systemization and Output…

Maybe not. But if so, here's how to make one and use it. ( NOTE: This is a revision of a post I did 2 years ago. I’m revising it because I have many more subscribers and this is when…

The problem is the exceptions - and that's the rule! There are so many benefits to systemizing your company. Without systems, work gets done by people with a lot of knowledge, expertise, and intuition. But that wisdom is locked in…

Warning: This is a Nerdy Post. "I don't want to just learn what this guy does. I want my company to learn it." I heard those words from a buyer (we'll call him Bob) who had recently bought his company…

Why war is a bad metaphor for business. Business has often been described as war, but I think that's a poor metaphor. For one thing the point is not to win, as I said in a recent twitter post. Photo…

That's the first lesson from the greatest NCAA basketball coach. John Wooden is famous for being arguably the greatest basketball coach in college sports and for propelling many of his players on to stellar careers in the NBA. He's also…

Revenue doesn't come from where you think it does. One problem I run into when helping clients adopt Output Thinking is that entrepreneurs often don't go deep enough. Here's what I mean. If you ask where does revenue come from…

Your vision is tied to outputs. Here's how. Your vision is literally what you see. Your vision for your company is what you see that's possible. What your company can do or become that it hasn't yet. How your company…

There's a huge difference between 98% and 100%. The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90% of the time. But it's worse than a time suck. Here's why. The typical…

If you can't find enough experts here's a better way. This Post is Based on Two Ideas. The only reason to hire people is that you need them to produce results (which I call outputs). Outputs come from two places:…

How to stop wasting time and get your message across. Ed was a salesman. He practically lived in his car. And often when he was on the road in meetings all day, the team in his office needed to get…

To grow, your company must do hand-offs well. Before we start, I’m asking for a favor. Many of you have bought my book, Output Thinking, and for that I am grateful. If you have, I'm asking you to please leave…

Is it better or worse to have a plan? Yes! One method is putting one foot in front of the other and as long as each step is taking you higher, you're doing OK. The other way is to develop…

How you get where you want to go. I didn't coin the term TRAP ZONE but have talked about plateaus of profitability and the cash crunch valleys that come between them. I prefer the concept of plateaus rather than peaks,…

How to get away from the day to day routine. OK so you've been reading my posts (that's about half of you) and applying this stuff (that's probably half again). What's happened? You've developed systems. You've documented them - all…

It should change how you spend your time! The short answer is I don't know. I can only tell you what it's like to work with me. There are coaches that range from quasi-therapists to straight up consulting. My definitions…

As your company grows it becomes different not just bigger. Most people track company growth by revenue. One generating $10M in revenue is twice as big as one generating $5M. That's not very useful as the are many things that…

The difference matters. A lot! Outputs and Systems are all about management. But there's another important aspect of running a company. Leadership. These two words are often confused or interchanged, but they really are separate skill sets. The distinction is…

Yes. Sort of. But that's where the money is. This post is a long answer to a question raised by Tim Ludwig - @tsludwig on Twitter (now X). Tim asked: If you were developing a scorecard or checklist to assess…

The answer will surprise you. The output you want from customers is revenue. And you spend time, money, and effort, to find those customers and close a deal. This is typically called marketing & sales. But they won't pay you…