KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Escaping Production: A Back-to-Basics Guide to Building Scalable Business Processes

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

Summary: Host John Kitchens and guest Joel discuss strategies for overcoming operational chaos by systematically creating business processes. They differentiate between simple admin work and true CEO-level operational leadership, emphasizing that documented SOPs allow agents to delegate effectively and build a business that operates independently of the founder. Joel outlines how to prioritize core organizational functions, involve team members in documenting workflows, use simple formats like Google Docs or short checklists, and continuously optimize systems.

Seven-figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO. Welcome to the John Kitchens Coach podcast Experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. You're ready to think bigger and transform your business into a path to lasting freedom. What's happening, everybody, man? Thank you guys jumping in with Mr. Joel Perso and myself. I'm going to dive into our Power Hour series this month, really diving into conquering the operational chaos.

And nobody better than Mr. Joel Perso to run. run us through. We had a fantastic rundown of kind of the evolution of the of the operational hire essentially if you if you will Joel kind of recapping on that real quick going from just just a general admin, office admin, office manager and just continuing all the way up to what does it mean to be COO and what does it mean to be an integrator the do's and don'ts and just kind of getting some clarity around who that person is. You know, we all need a Joel and a JK really to help us take things to that next level. And it was really cool walking through that last week.

And so I'm excited to continue the operational chaos kind of flow and series that we're diving into this month. So I'm going to kick it over to you, brother, and let you run with it. All right. Let me share here. So when we started talking about this, I was like, all right, last or two years ago, we did 26, I think we did 26 trainings within the agent to CEO mastermind community. So I started thinking, all right, what are the best ones we can, what are the best ones we can pull out kind of for this just monthlong series? Maybe we'll continue it. But so I just said, you know what, I'm going to take the, I'm going to take the four most common questions, complaints, you know, things that the business owners come to.

me with or that they get wrong if I'm working with them. So last week was, you know, that operations hire, what's the difference between my admin and my operations manager? What's the difference between an integrator and a COO, that kind of stuff? And so number two, far and away, question that comes up is around, is around actually building processes. So we all hear, okay, you need better systems. You need processes. Yep, I'm focused on my systems this year. Yep, We're building our processes. But where do we start? So this one is really a back-to-basics kind of conversation.

If you are pretty good at this, this might be a little bit boring. But if you're thinking through, gosh, we've never really built processes or documented processes or all our systems are a mess, then there'll be some value here for you. So building business process. And one of the things that I think is that having well thought out, well-designed processes is one of the main differences between being self-employed and being a business owner. Or put more simply, you can never escape a business that only lives in your head. Whether that means escape through selling a business or that just means escape through getting some freedom back because you've built a team and delegated. If everything stays in your head, you can never escape. bit. So putting processes in places is one of the foundational things to ever being able to

escape kind of the day-to-day or eventually escape the business altogether. And then great quote from Peter Drucker, efficiency is doing the right thing. Effectiveness is doing the, or sorry, efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. A balanced business process ensures both. And so that's going to be a piece of the conversation here as well. I always love to give you guys some reading materials, books you can grab, process, part of the EOS series, which is traction and rocket fuel. The business playbook, Chris Ronsio, who started Trainual, which is an LMS system for documenting process. And then the goal, we talk about the goal a lot with the theory of constraints. So some great options here for you.

I think part of the reason we get stuck when we're talking about building systems and process. is this is kind of what we either we think it's going to look like this and we never start or we tried to create something that ended up looking like this and said, okay, I guess I'm just not a systems person or I guess I'm just not a process person. So this is, you know, this is an example of what it shouldn't look like. What it should do is bring a lot of clarity. And so this is a better example, right? It's real basic and it should bring clarity. We have clear decision making forks. If we have clear decision making forks, if we we need them and you know we end up with with simplicity instead of complexity there's a there's a complexity that has to be introduced when we're creating systems but the benefit of it is if we go through that we end up with simplicity on the other side of that so a note here kind of just on the words and I'll talk about system versus process a little bit later but when I say process what I'm talking about is a system or structure that an organization

implements to produce a specific outcome, your standard operating procedure, your SOPs, that's where we're actually going to define and document the process. So your SOP is not the process. The SOP is where we document the process. And then you'll hear policies, procedures, processes. A policy is our guidelines or laws that might drive the processes or procedures. But all three are different things.

The main thing, and like so many things in business, leadership operations, the main thing is that you choose the language that you want and you're consistent with it. So if you want to say refer to these things as processes, great. If you want to refer to them as systems, great. Just be consistent. Just like when we talk about, are we going to say metrics? Are we going to say KPIs? Just be consistent with it, right?

So choose what makes sense or what you like and be consistent. So why do we think this is so important? Kind of like we talked about above, this is a way to create some automation within your business. and automation is leverage. This is what allows you to delegate, but then trust that things are being done in the right way. When we have good processes in place, we can give those processes to somebody else to execute or to manage and have confidence that they're being done right because they're well documented, they're well designed. Consistent client experience, especially as your business grows, it's critical that you provide the same experience

to clients. You're going to become known for the experience that you provide, whether that's good or bad. Good process is a way to consistently deliver a good experience. And then internally, same thing, consistent team member experience. So, you know, processes might speed up onboarding and training, create a consistent and positive experience for team members. They know what they need to do. They know how to do it. They know what success looks like. It's a better experience for your team members. And then exit strategy, whether that looks like selling a business or just being able to step out of production into a leadership role or eventually step out of the business altogether, to an ownership role cannot happen if you don't have great processes.

So I'm going to take you guys through kind of the process of processes. And if this gets a little heavy, then there's going to be a little like TLDR at the end with a simplified version of where to start. But the most important place of where do we start here is by identifying the core processes. So what are the main things that have to happen or tasks that our business perform? So this could be, you know, sales process, customer service, inventory management, any other task. In a real estate business, what are your core process is going to be? All right, lead generation, processes around our CRM, our buyer processes, presentations around that,

listing, what happens when we take a listing, what does marketing look like, when do we go live, how does that all work? Those are the processes that are going to be core. So start there. There's going to be a ton, eventually. But start with the most important things. That could be things because they're important because they happen every single day and we have to get them really systematized. Or these are the real things that drive our business and when they go wrong, the business suffers.

Those are the things we want to build processes around first. So get really clear first on the core processes. To tie this back to some other conversations we've had coach, you know, we start with our functions, right? When we talk about designing the business, we start with our functions, we have a sales function, a marketing function, function, a marketing function, an operations function, we have a finance function. Within those functions are going to be our core processes. So if you think, all right, what are all the core processes? Start by going back to the functions. A lot of you guys have seen our functional org charts or our accountability charts that we use to design the kind of the structure of the business.

That's a good place to start with this. So start with the function. Okay, within our sales function, what are the core processes here? Within our marketing function, what are the core? core processes. That could be, you know, in some business, that could be what is our, you know, what is our touch plan that we have to generate referrals? That's a process. What is our social media posting schedule and what kind of content do we post? That could be a process within marketing. Within operations, what does our listing management process look like? What does our contract to close process look like? So get really clear, what are the core processes? And then start breaking them down. For each of those core processes, break it down into

smaller manageable steps or tasks, which is going to help you kind of see that workflow from start to finish. Doesn't mean that everything needs to end up on a, you know, on a flow chart with different boxes and get complicated. That's not what we're talking about. But we need to at least understand the workflow. How is that process getting done? What things need to happen in a certain order. So start breaking it down into the tasks. Again, it could be as simple as just a list on a Google Doc for right now. So break down those processes. A really key piece that sometimes we miss and a thing that really affects if your processes are going to be followed consistently is the team leader creates the process based on how that used to be done or how they think it's done and they don't involve the people who are actually doing it. So relatively early in the process, involve your team.

If you've got employees or collaborators, involve them in this process of creating. A lot of times they have firsthand knowledge of the specific tasks. They can give you valuable insights and feedback. If somebody's using a CRM and you haven't really used the CRM at a high level in a few years, they might know that, hey, it doesn't work that one anymore. They made a change to the system. They updated, they added more features. So involve your team early in the process.

They're going to know how the work is being done right now and they're going to be able to help you connect the dots between the ideal outcome and what's actually happening right. now and then prioritize so we listed out our core processes prioritize and and then if this is all overwhelming then just start small so come up with a list what are the most important things and one of the ways you might prioritize is just getting kind of some simple processes down so you can start developing this skill of creating processes so maybe instead of doing our entire transaction coordination contract to close right now we're going to start with

listing management. Okay, when we take a listing, what needs to happen? Well, listing needs to be marketed. It needs to go into the MLS. We have to order photos and video. We have to go live. What are those things that need to happen? So start with a simpler one, but prioritize and then just work on one at a time. So the best practice would be starting with the ones that are kind of most critical to the business or again where inconsistencies could have the most impact. So if we don't do the same thing every time the right way, the business, is going to suffer those are great ones to start with then choose a format decide how you're going to document the processes could be checklists flowcharts step-by-step guides we can involve videos you use Microsoft Word Google Docs lucid chart if we want to make a flow chart or tools like Trello Asana things like that my recommendation for almost everybody is is start with a Google Doc and put the steps that need to happen in a Google Doc a Google Doc a lot of things can turn into a checklist. And I'll talk about that as a tip a little bit later. But choose a format that you like. In the beginning here, it's better for it to be simple and clear

than it is for it to be really pretty or clever or advanced. So a list of things on a Google Doc is better to start than a complicated flow chart. There are times when flowcharts can be valuable, when there's complicated processes, when there's decision forks that need to happen. and if this, then this. Yes, start with Google Docs, Microsoft Word, things like that. So choose a format. And then some really important stuff here when we're talking about our processes,

and especially now that we're getting into kind of documenting them, be really clear and concise. If you can, avoid industry jargon, avoid things that sound cool or sound pretty, but that don't add to it. anybody who's reading that SOP or looking at that process should be able to should be able to understand it at a good level even if they don't have prior experience. Now imagine you've got a new employee coming in and you've got really complicated,

difficult to understand processes and SOPs. It's going to just make that so much more difficult. So be clear and concise as much as possible. It's a huge piece that we overcomplicate, when it comes to process and systems. Then we'll move into kind of review and optimize. So as you start to document, all right, here's what that workflow is. Here's what the process is.

Start to look for steps that can be simplified or improved. A lot of times just the fact that we're documenting it highlight some inefficiencies. Okay, why are we doing that step? Oh, well, the system used to have this, you know, limitation, and that's the way we got around that limitation. But now that limitation's gone. the system is better or the tool that we're using is better so now we don't have to do that thing anymore so look for ways to review and optimize sometimes we'll find out that well there's

there's six different people involved in this process and there actually only needs to be two that's a great thing to spot as we're as we're building these out so review and optimize and then establish a review cycle so your processes aren't going to stay the same forever one of the reasons that we create soPs and they sit on the shelf or sit in google drive and die is because there's no review cycle. So it's going to be different depending on what we're talking about. It could be as once a year we look at the employee handbook and just double check. Does this still make sense? Has anything changed here? So processes like that could be once a year. More important things to the business, contract to close, buyer processes, listing processes.

Maybe we want to take a quick look at those every quarter. Now that could be a, you know, part of the homework to strategic planning is let's look at our core processes. Maybe that's not every single process, every quarter, but again, the most important ones. Sometimes the business changes. Everybody's buyer process changed last year, right? When the lawsuit and the updates came, we're going to have to update processes from time to time. Technology changes. The first time I made an SOP, it was about how to fill out the desk calendar with the proper calendar and dates and deadlines for transaction coordination, which didn't have the software back then, right?

So they're going to change. Make sure that they're accessible. So Google Drive, Dropbox, things like that. They have to be easily accessible for when the team needs them. And then let's make sure we're training the team. So we have our processes. They're documented. Train the team on them.

Ensure they understand each step and the importance of following the processes. And then encourage feedback. So just like your team might give you good feedback when we're designing them, they're going to give you feedback about how they're working. Hey, it's not working as well as we thought it did. It's cumbersome. It's difficult. It's confusing. Let's go back to it. Let's go back to it and try to improve it. And then be flexible. You know, keep in mind that the processes should serve the business, not the other way around.

If something's not working, be open to adjusting. You know, flexibility is really a strength and a small business. So this is kind of the process of processes. But I want to give you guys really practical tips of like, okay, that sounds great, Joel, but that sounds like, a big thing going through that whole that whole list like where do I start break it down for me. Hey, before we move on, every great business strategy starts with one question. What's really holding us back? If you're not sure how to answer that, take five minutes and complete the growth score assessment. It gives you insight into the eight areas that drive growth and will show you exactly where to focus to increase revenue, improve operations, and grow with confidence.

go to my growthscore.com and take the assessment now. Now back to the show. So first tip is keep it simple to start. You don't need a flowchart with graphics. You don't need a 20-page, you know, Canva PDF with screenshots of everything. It can be a list of tasks in a Google Doc to start. That's a process where that's the start of documenting it. Don't underestimate the power of a great checklist.

The Checklist Manifesto is a fantastic book. Pre-flight checklists, no matter how many times a pilot has flown, how many hours they have, they still have a pre-flight checklist every single time before that plane takes off. One of the great examples in the checklist manifesto is the post-surgery infection rates that dropped dramatically when operating rooms instituted instituted strict checklists before every procedure that happened. Doesn't matter how many surgeries that surgeon has done. It doesn't matter how many patients the nursing staff or the anesthesiologist had served. The checklist dropped the rates.

So checklists are proven to work at a high level. They can be really simple. If we are using a checklist or kind of a step-by-step guide, keep the task descriptions really short. and then we link to a training video or we link to the full documented SOP. So a checklist can live in, again, Google Doc, Asana, Trello, any of those tools. The checklist is the thing that gets looked at every time. We don't need our team looking at the SOP or watching the training video every time.

But if they get stuck at a certain point in the checklist, they can click the link, go to the training video, or click the link and go to the full SOP. So it's a great format for starting out. So the things don't get overwhelming. Keep the checklist descriptions short and then link to where the full version is, whether that's training video or SOP or both. Don't get hung up on the language. Just be consistent.

Again, we're calling them processes, procedures. Are we calling them SOPs? Are we calling them just be consistent. Don't get hung up on it. And then I think probably the number one tip of where do you start is most of you have things that you already do consistently. You do your Breyer presentation the same way every time, but you've never documented it. So that's a great place to start with your core processes. So there may be things that are wildly inconsistent, but as you look through your core processes,

if you find ones that you pretty much do the same thing every time, hey, I do my CMAs the same way every time, great, now we can document that. Those are easy ones to get off our place, first because you already know it at such a high level, you already do it at a high level, you do it consistently. Start there. Now we're just documenting what you're already doing is a great place to start when it comes to this kind of thing. So this is kind of a, you know, progress over perfection, but it's my opinion that a good process is going to handle 80% of the situations that it's designed for. There's always going to be weird things that happen, situations that it doesn't quite fit and just one-offs, right?

I believe it's much better to train your staff on problem solving and critical thinking for that other 20% rather than end up with a 900 SOP page library that covers every possible eventuality. There might be five most common objections. We don't need to document how to respond to all 287 objections that have ever happened, right? So if your process handles 80% of the situations it's designed for,

I think that's good enough to launch. Now, if we find, hey, we're having consistent issues over and over again that the process doesn't address, yes, we want to update the process or create an additional process for that. But you can't create policies, procedures, processes, and SOPs for everything that's ever going to happen in your business. It's just not the way it works. So we want to do the most important things and handle the most situation

that it can and then we have to just have a culture of being flexible, adaptable, problem solving, critical thinking because the one-offs are always going to happen. Now you can have a communication process for how to handle the one-offs or handle that 20%. That would be a great thing to have. Hey, first thing I want you to do is try to find a solution. Then I want you to go to, you know, look through the knowledge library. Then I want you to come to me with, you know, your question, whatever it is. That's fine to put into a process, but no process is going to handle everything that it's designed to. It's just the business is too complicated. So a quick note here on system and process. It's pretty common for these two things to be interchangeable. The way that I tend to look at it, especially for more complicated things, is that the system is kind of the overarching thing that needs to happen.

And then the processes are all the little things that need to happen to make the system work. So, for example, our system is how we market our new listings. And then the different processes that make up that system might be, okay, we've got our photography, 3D tours, our drone video. That's a process. How do we order those? How do we handle that? The social media campaign that happens when we take a new listing, that's a process. Do we do a post?

Do we do a just listed postcard? That's a process. Do we do an open house to get ready when we launch the new listing? That's a process. So that's a way you can think about it. A lot of times you'll just see system and process be interchangeable. I think that's fine too. Again, it's just important that you be consistent with the language within your organization.

So I gave away, the start of last year, I gave away, I gave away this tool. And I wanted to make it available to anybody watching this. Shoot me an email and I'll send you. But what this is is a way, it's a way to bring your processes into real. life for your team. So what this activity checklist does, it has daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. And then when they're due, what function it is, what the task is. And then it has links to the SOPs. So this is a way for you to really bring into execution after we're documenting and creating these things. One of the reasons that SOPs, you know, die on the shelf

and coach, you and I have talked about this, is that it's not connected to the to the activities of the employee and so they just sit there. So the activity checklist is a way to kind of organize the things that you're building the processes to accomplish to make sure that they're getting done and make sure that the processes are being followed. So this isn't the process. This is a way to help you organize a lot of your processes and then ensure that they're actually getting done on a daily weekly basis. So if you guys want the 2026 version of this, the screenshot says 25, but I'm almost done updating it for 26. and that'll be ready to go.

So feel free to shoot me an email. Joel at thegrowthcentric.com for me. There's the email there, and I'll send you a copy of that activity checklist. If you're using Trello, Asana, things like that at a high level, the activity checklist isn't for you, but if you'd have nothing in place right now, that activity checklist is a good place to start.

Yeah, that's so awesome. You know, the thing that helped me kind of connect system and process was, you know, the mass transit system. And then what are all the things that make the mass transit system possible? And I was like, oh, okay, got it. That makes sense. I can get that.

So I love what you had there. You know, what's our marketing, what's our marketing, you know, mass, you know, our marketing system. What's our listing marketing system? Then the processes are all the checklist, the to dos, the things that have to happen in order for that to be true. It's good. Good stuff. short and sweet man right to the point yeah i think so too yes you know straight to the point and really

it's not sexy i think to you know running and gun in um the the the easiest way that i found for me and and just for helping people kind of get rolling with this is just record what you do just record what you do and then with your team with with with with with with with with with It could help you really flow out what that system, what that process. Help me create a checklist from this. But that's the easiest way is just record every stinking thing that you do. Yeah, that's a great call. And some of the AI tools are getting pretty good.

The SOP builder that's kind of already in loom is pretty good. There's an AI tool called Scribes that's exactly built for this. That's really cool. So, yeah, that's a great point is just start recording. it. You can use the AI tools to do it. If you have a virtual assistant or staff, you can record it, send it to them and tell them to turn it into an SOP. Hey, document the steps that I'm going through in this video. And then those videos, again, we can document it. Now in the checklist, we've got a link to the SOP that we created from that video, but we also just have a link to that video.

And if somebody wants to go read through it, they can read through it. Somebody wants to go watch, they can watch it. So the most, the most effective way, in my opinion, is to have the shortened version, whether that's a checklist or just like a one pager for a process, that links to more documented SOPs and links to the

training videos. I think that's the, I think that's the most effective way to do it. I love it. And I think to to your point when you showed the little kind of flow chart of you know, leave the house, check the time before seven, after seven, do I take the subway? Do I take the bus? My objective is to get to school. I think if you could

create that flow visual in there as well, right? So you have the things, but if you have kind of how it flows, it helps you, to me, it helps me see, is there unnecessary steps in this flow that can be removed? Or you look at it and you're like, ah, what if we, you know, we're getting hung up right in here. what if we added a video in here in part of that process, right? So there's just things that, you know, V1 is better than no version at all, but being able to go through and the more you can see it, then that's the improvement side of things. And what would, what would Vern would, he would be like, listen, guys,

there's only really like nine key core processes in your business. You know, take one a quarter, revamp it, dial it in, you know, refresh it, shoot new training videos, update the checklist, add new technology. And so, you know, if you have the nine core processes, you know, every couple of years, you're really reworking through each of those foundational, you know, core processes that you have in your business. Yeah. Yeah, the visuals work, they work especially well with large,

larger systems. So like a whole, the whole client journey. That's a visual. They also, they also work really well when there's, when there's like contingent points

or decision forks. So I just, I was just working with a team that we're building out, working on lead conversion with them. So in our SOP, we got it all the way down to detailed so we can train brand new agents.

If the lead answers, it forks here. And you go into qualification and then lead disposition. If the lead doesn't answer, it goes into the 10 Days of Pain campaign to try to get them on the phone, right? So having the workflow visuals work well for that. So you can see, hey, there's a decision point here. Based on what happens when you do this step, it could go here or it could go here.

And they're different outcomes. So the visuals, especially flow charts like that work really well for when we need to communicate, hey, there's based on what happens to the step. There's a decision for, yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's so good. Well, guys, I want to, those of you on here with us, if you want to unmute, ask any questions, got some time here to answer whatever you guys have. If not, Joel can get to fixing dinner early. My Anna is referencing. So for me, looking at the systems versus processes, when I was documenting any processes, It was more that, like you said, the step by step, and when we were going through the actual systems, it was, it included more of the who was responsible for the process. So it was plugging in. And then another thing that happened early on was I always plugged in the who with a name, not a title.

So when that person left the organization reflecting back on that system, although I could easily plug in who was supposed to do it, somebody picking it up and looking at it was just like, well, who's this person? know, where's this person in the organization? You're like, oh, they're not here anymore. Well, how long they've been gone? Oh, three years. You know what I mean? More of a plugging in the titles for the systems part of it rather than the actual names of the people and then having the processes be the list and the system referencing the person that was responsible for owning that process. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, if you don't have a, if you don't have the activity checklist or something like the you know an asana trello where you're kind of managing doing the processes it's even more important than to have who owns this process who's responsible for it yeah totally yeah

where would you start jol if you had to like start if you had to start shuffling things around and put them in it in a in a specific order what would be kind of the filtering system to help you determine the order of you know what you're going to hit first and then second and so on If you're a solo agent, I would start with trying to build systems around your lead generation and your marketing. The reason I say that is we see people waste a lot of time sitting down at their desk in the morning and then saying, okay, what do I do today? Whereas if you have a good process for how are you lead generation?

you sit down for your prospecting time, what do you do? In what order? Okay, you call any new leads that came in. Then you work your past clients, then you work your... Whatever it is, right? But it comes with a process so you don't waste time and mental energy figuring out what to do every day. And then same thing with your social media.

On Tuesday afternoons, I do my Facebook posts for the week or on this day, I do this. But then even keep taking it further. I do these types of posts on this day. I do, I posted this platform on this time. Turn, turn that into a process, even if you don't have a team for yourself so that you don't, you take the guesswork out of it. It's such a, it's such a discouraging weight

on your shoulders to sit down at your desk and say, what am I supposed to do today to be successful? So that's the process, that's the value of process when you're a solopreneur or you're an agent on your own, is it helps you be more efficient, even though yeah, you're doing the same, things. And then after lead gen and marketing, I would say then move into buyer and listing processes. Make sure that you're doing the same thing every time you meet with a buyer. The

reason it's important for an individual agent is so that you can get better at it. If you're doing the same thing every time, you can look for ways to improve. If you're just shooting from the hip on every time you meet a buyer, well, maybe you have an idea of what works, but how can you really improve that skill? And then for a team, we want to have that so that we can have consistency across the team, right? So I would say marketing and lead gen first, then move into buyer and seller presentations or processes. What happens when we schedule an appointment? What happens? What do we do on the appointment? Those kind of things. Listing is even more important. What do we have in a listing packet? Do we send a pre-listing packet? What do we say on the

presentation? When do we talk about price? All of that kind of stuff. Turn that into a process for yourself first so that you're doing the same thing every time you can get better at it you can improve your conversion with those and then i would say we move into uh then move into fulfillment then talk about contract to close or listing management that kind of stuff so it's kind of of flows how your business would flow right we can't gen into getting a client into servicing a client yeah but i think that i think that's where i would start I love that. Go ahead, Renee. Having worked with, I mean, obviously you guys having a certain profile, having rained in your high Ds and your high eye personalities, getting them to sit down and do these things is like, you know, square peg round hole kind of thing.

What would you recommend as far as their cadence in terms of like how many hours should they be sitting? down to focus on this and develop the process without developing that fatigue to where they just don't ever want to look at it again and continue in the chaos. What's your recommendation there? I think it really depends a lot on the current situation and then depends a lot on kind of how fast you're trying to grow and hit and hit your goals. So if you've got major, if you've got problems, like it needs to be a big focus. Like if you're losing it. listings because you have terrible listing processes like you got to do that immediately and and that might be lock yourself in your office all day on

Sunday until it's done right so if it's hurting your business that your systems aren't good enough that becomes a major priority maybe the priority why you know why bother generating any more listing leads if you're not converting them because your processes suck so if you've got big problems it becomes it becomes maybe your biggest priority to solve those problems because that's your bottleneck instantly, right? Of we're straight up losing money by these. If things are going pretty good, but you're starting to think about, okay, I want this

business to be less dependent on me, then I think coming up with a realistic idea of just what's possible for you. I know that's not a real concrete answer, but can you take, can you take, you know, 8 a a.m. to noon on Thursday mornings to just focus on this. Is that realistic for you? Maybe it's two hours a week, you know? And maybe all that is, is the first step is the first time I sit down for my two-hour systems block is going to be identifying the core processes. Maybe that's all I get done this week is identified the core processes in each function. And then next week, I'm going to, I'm going to lay out, okay, what are all the little components of those core processes?

That's all you did that week. The following week you prioritized them, started putting them into a list, and then you just started recording the videos for those things. So I would say that that would be a perfectly fine cadence. If things are going okay and you just know that you need to do this to kind of go to the next level or you need to eventually move your way towards more freedom, more delegation, I'd say what can you commit to, but just be realistic about it. it's not going to be eight hours a week for most people in the beginning. It's going to be a couple. Love it. Yeah. Wherever you have the biggest leak in the boat, that would be it for sure. Renee, you kind of, you know, you said like square peg round hole.

Like for a lot of you guys, this stuff sounds miserable. Like turn it into a joke, you know, like get your favorite drink from Starbucks and be like, going to do my systems time, you know, got to go, got to go put my time in. make it lighthearted because it is lighthearted. So eat the frog. That is it. Well, good stuff. So if you guys want to grab a copy of that,

email Joel, get a copy of that. And yeah, I mean, you're struggling with one, any other ideas, any questions. DM us, shoot Joel an email. And can definitely walk through different ways to get this thing rolling. I think it's like anything, right?

Once you kind of get in the groove of it, you get into it. Now you kind of got a system to create the system. Yeah, it's good. Joel, thank you, brother. Renee, good seeing you. Everybody else. Be back again next week. We're going to continue this series.

A couple more weeks here, conquering the operational chaos. And we'll kind of see at the end of January what, what things look like, see if we're going to keep rolling. But Joel, thank you. And we'll see you guys next week. See it. Thanks for tuning in. If you're done guessing and ready to lead like a real CEO

with a custom strategy, real accountability, and proven systems, check out my executive 101 coaching at john kitchens.com. Fill out the application and book your one-on-one call with me. Be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. Catch you on the next one. Thank you.