Ryan Deiss shares how he created a system for business growth, leading to $200M in revenue. He emphasizes the importance of developing an operating system for companies, measuring performance with scorecards, and analyzing financial metrics. The podcast also discusses innovative cash management strategies, team meetings, and company planning techniques.
Implementing SOPs alone isn't enough, creating an operating system for companies drives growth.
Shifting from growth-centric to systematizing operations is crucial for sustainable success.
Establishing clear metrics, accountability, and using scorecards are key for driving sustainable growth.
Deep dives
Creating an Operating System for a Business
The podcast episode discusses how Ryan Deiss, a successful entrepreneur, built a system for running companies effectively. His book, 'Get Scalable,' focuses on creating an operating system for businesses to achieve long-term success. Ryan emphasizes that growth alone is not enough and shares his experiences of transitioning from prioritizing growth to establishing systematic processes for sustainable success. By creating visual business process maps and playbooks, Ryan explains how businesses can enhance value creation, emphasizing the importance of starting with core questions like 'How do we create and capture marketplace value?'
Transitioning from Growth to Systematic Processes
Ryan highlights the importance of shifting from a growth-focused approach to one that prioritizes systematizing operations for long-term success. He shares insights into the challenges faced when solely relying on growth and the necessity of implementing well-defined systems to avoid scalability issues. By emphasizing the essential questions of 'Who do we serve and how do we serve them?' Ryan underscores the significance of visualizing value creation processes and utilizing business process maps to streamline operations effectively.
Importance of Clear Metrics and Accountability
Ryan emphasizes the significance of establishing clear metrics and accountability within a company, advocating for the use of manual data entry for better insights. He discusses the implementation of scorecards aligned with value creation processes, ensuring that key metrics drive optimal performance. Ryan stresses the importance of focusing on distributable cash as a vital metric to gauge business health and maintain financial transparency. By aligning metrics with high-value processes and creating a system of accountability, businesses can streamline operations and drive sustainable growth.
Improving Meetings Efficiency and Effectiveness
Meetings should focus on reviewing scorecards to track progress and identify challenges. The rule of 'No scorecard, no recurring meeting' ensures that meetings are purposeful and results-oriented. Teams should aim to keep meetings brief by discussing any existing issues and focusing on optimizing what is already working. Scorecards help identify areas needing attention, with specific plans outlined for yellow and red indicators.
Understanding Business Ventures and Investment Approach
The speaker has operated multiple businesses, transitioning to focus on private equity investments through acquisitions and partnerships. In the business structure, the speaker typically enters with a profits-only interest deal of 10-20%, ensuring both equity and profits involvement. The strategy involves adding value through marketing, operations, and specific systems implementation to drive growth and potential exits. The goal is to leverage an operating system approach to enhance business efficiency and profitability.
Ryan Deiss’s business was too chaotic to grow beyond a few team members. So he tried creating SOP’s, you know those how-to docs that every business is told to create, but few people end up using.
He figured there had to be a better way. Through experiments with he came up with “an operating system for companies.” He says this approach helped him grow to over a dozen different companies which last year did revenue in excess of $200 million.
He explained his process in his book Get Scalable: How to Create an Operating System for Your Business, and in this interview.