Sam Carpenter - Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less THIRD EDITION

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

A BRAHAM L INCOLN

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 produces 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 and mistakes.

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

This book is different.

Its main thrust goes beyond providing new information, although it does that. The root purpose of Work the System is to guide you to a new way of perceiving your life so you can gain better command of it and therefore be better able to get what you want. I like to call this mini-awakening getting it, and I describe what it is and how to achieve it in part one.

I changed my life after a moment of insight, moving from a nightmarish, impoverished existence to a life of peace and prosperity. I now work two hours a week instead of eighty. Yes, Im wealthy now, too: 100 percent self-made. Ive had the same small business for twenty-seven years, and this is the story of how I transformed it from a chaotic ordeal into an ATM machine, pulling my staff upward with me while delivering the highest quality of service available in my particular industry. How I broke free, and how you can too, is described in detail. This is not theory; its fact, and believe me, if I can do it, so can you! Careerwise, 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 my strategy become hyperefficient, and most of them keep doing what they have been doing all along, as they finally leave the competition in the dust or suddenly streak up the corporate ladder. There are no gimmicks or mysterious theories here. No Six Sigma-type complexities. No hype. No BS. What I discuss, including the getting-it insight you will experience, will make perfect sense.

Sound interesting? The broad, nutshell premise?

There are an infinite number of puzzle pieces out there, and for each of us to get what we want in our lives, its just a matter of seeing those pieces, making a proper selection, and then assembling them in a way that produces the results we desire. And no, in focusing on the mechanical, you wont lose your humanity.

Work the System is not rah-rah, pumping you up but offering nowhere to go. After you achieve the systems mindset perspective, I carefully explain the mechanical steps you can take in order to create prosperity and peace in your life (in parts two and three). Theres more beyond the book, too. Ill talk about that in a minute.

Despite the sly title, there is nothing sinister in these pages, and theres nothing that wont seem logical. Its a simple message presented in a thorough way: contrary to popular opinion, the workings of the world make perfect sense. There is an inherent order that is stunningly evident if one drops preconceived notions and quietly observes life-as-it-is. By internalizing this new insightby going one layer deeperits an easy matter to arrange things in order to get what one wants.