Sam Carpenter - Work the System

This book (Work the System) provides Sam Carpenters strategy for business management. It is sold with the understanding that Greenleaf Book Group, LLC, and North Sister Publishing, Inc. are not engaged in rendering professional services. Although certain business organizations have been granted the right to use the information and lessons from this book to teach and provide consulting services to their independent clients, the liability of North Sister Publishing, Inc., author Sam Carpenter, and Greenleaf Book Group, LLC, for any such third-party instructional or consulting services is specifically disclaimed. (Continued on the Disclaimer pagean extension of the copyright pageon page 283.)

Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press

Austin, Texas

www.gbgpress.com

2008 2021, North Sister Publishing, Inc. 4th Edition, 2021. All right reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

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Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group and Kim Lance

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Kim Lance

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication

Carpenter, Sam.

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less /

Sam Carpenter4th ed.

p.; cm.

First ed. published: Bend, Oregon: North Sister Publishing, 2008.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62634-770-0

1. Business Management. 2. Business & Economics/Personal Success.

3. Success in Business. I. Title.

HD58.9 .C377 2009

658.4/02

ISBN: 978-1-62634-769-4

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

20 21 22 23 24 25 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition: April 2008

Second Edition: April 2009

Third Edition: June 2014

Fourth Edition: January 2021

2008943859

ALSO BY SAM CARPENTER

The Systems Mindset: Managing the Machinery of Your Life

To Dad

Just get on with it, he would say.

Ockhams Razor:

One should choose the simplest explanation,

the one requiring the fewest assumptions and principles.

WILLIAM OF OCKHAM, FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH PHILOSOPHER

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

If I had eight hours to cut down a tree, Id spend six sharpening my axe.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I say this without hyperbole: Work the System is one of the most useful business books youll ever read. I should knowI read business books for a living, and teach creative people from all over the world how to build businesses that are profitable, enjoyable, and sustainable.

Here are the top three questions Im asked every single day:

• Starting a business seems so complicated. Where do I begin?
• Im working a lot, but not making much money. How can I improve my profitability?
• Im constantly stressed and anxious. How can I run my business without going crazy?

The answer to these questions is always the same: learn how to work the system.

Fundamentally, every business is a system: a collection of processes that, together, reliably produce an intended result. The more you focus on improving your business systems, the better results youll produce. Its as simple as that.

When most people hear the word system, however, their eyes glaze over. Most of us are trained to think that standard operating procedures, checklists, documentation, and the like are boring and bureaucratic.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Heres what happens when you begin improving your systems:

You make more money, but do less work.

You have more focus and energy to do your best work.

You make far fewer errors.

You fix the mistakes you make quickly and permanently. You feel more calm, collected, and under control.

Solid business systems are largely a product of calm, rational, straightforward thinking. Its a skill that can be learned quickly, and a method that can be applied to improve every aspect of your life.

I use the ideas in Work the System every day when building my own business, and Ive recommended this book to my readers and clients since the publication of the first edition.

Im glad this book has found its way into your hands. Work the System will help you make better decisions, get more done, and have more fun along the way.

Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA and The First 20 Hours

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Dysfunction Is Gold

This book is different.

Its main thrust goes beyond providing new information. The root purpose of Work the System is to guide you to a more precise view of realitys simple mechanics so you can gain better command of your life and therefore be better able to get what you want out of it.

There will be a mechanical adjustment in the way you see your world, and when this profound mental shift occurs, systems methodology will make irrefutable sense and your work and life will never be the same. I like to call this mini-awakening getting it, and in Part One I describe exactly what that is and how to achieve it.

The nutshell premise? Your life is a collection of individual systems. Fix those systems, one at a time, and you will fix your life.

To whom is this book intended? Its written especially for anyone who operates a business, from the founder of a brand-new mom-and-pop start-up to the seasoned CEO of a multinational. At either extreme and in between, the tenets apply uniformly because lifes fundamental formula works the same way all the time, everywhere.

Heres an insight that Mike, the owner of a $50 million overseas enterprise, and one of our first consulting clients, gave me: Sam! I now see that dysfunction is gold! Mike gets it, and is exactly correct. If you are enduring the typical organizational inefficiency and then suddenly see that inefficiency, and then confidently plow ahead step by step to eliminate it, you will create additional significant bottom-line profits. Is there lots of dysfunction in your organization? Then there is lots of gold to be extracted.

This increased cash flow will be in addition to the new growth you will experience.

The current internal dysfunction in your business is the gold that has been there all along. You just need to get busy excavating.

I changed my life after a moment of insight, moving from a nightmarish existence to a life of peace and prosperity. In my primary business, I now work less than one hour a month. Yes, we are financially secure now, with more than my wife, Diana, and I need, which enables us to invest and share. Ive had the same small business for thirty-six years, and this is the story of how I transformed it from a chaotic ordeal into a gold mine, pulling my staff upward with me while delivering the highest quality of service available in my industry.

How I broke freeand especially how you can toois described in detail. Believe me, if I can do it so can you! Career-wise, you may have to do something different than what you do now in order to reach your goals of freedom and prosperity, but probably not. People who follow the WTS strategy become super efficient, and most of them keep doing what they have been doing all along as they suddenly break the chains and leave their competition in the dust.