You Are Not A Machine, Stop Working Like One (w/ Robert Granholm of The Life Design Project)

On 11.05.09, In Process Automation, by David Walsh

If you haven’t been following Robert Granholm (@robgranholm) over at The Life Design Project, you are missing one of the few down-to-earth, practical voices on lifestyle design. No fluff, no “maybe someday”, no hesitation – pure execution. His experiments are entirely systematic, methodical and empirical, and he’s seeing the results of the ridiculous amount of time he’s spent deconstructing everything he does into something someone else can do. He works under IT Arsenal and has a number of products in the works to turn his expertise into a niche, low-input passive income stream.

We’re specifically talking about streamlining the painful process of finding new clients and projects (a massive timesuck if you’re a freelancer) and the alluring drug called the paycheck. Robert elaborately details his experiments in this blog post. You may be wondering why we’re hitting on freelancing and service-based income. Isn’t the point to eliminate trading time for money and create passive income? The answer is yes, but it’s critical to start from where you are and build yourself out of the inefficiencies that rule your life (something Robert talks about). You shouldn’t necessarily scrap it all and start over. Anything you’re doing poorly is an opportunity to improve and freelance work can nicely fuel your grander plans for a more low-effort income.

In Gestalt therapy , there’s a core concept I love called the paradoxical theory of change, and it couldn’t be more fitting. We can view our current job/business through the same lens we’d view our personal lives…

The more one attempts to be who one is not, the more one remains the same (Yontef, 2005). Conversely, when people identify with their current experience, the conditions of wholeness and growth support change. Change comes about as a result of “full acceptance of what is, rather than a striving to be different”.

If you’ve mentally shifted your mindset but remain enslaved by unquestioned inefficiency and tedious, low-value work, your lifestyle will never match your intentions. Wherever you are, start there and build yourself out of it. The entire experience of liberating yourself, of shifting from employee to CEO, is invaluable. Trying to skip over it will only set you back further.

Some links and resources mentioned…

Work The System by Sam Carpenter (@workthesystem), an unparalleled exploration of systematic lifestyle & business design
Source Control by David Walsh (yes, me), an lifestyle-focused approach to outsourcing and intelligent process design
E-Myth by Michael Gerber, another classic book about building your business as a prototype, enabling scalability and streamlined operation
MindMeister, a killer tool for deconstructing your processes and understanding what you do to create results
HeyCraig & AllOfCraigs, two helpful services for scanning Craigslist efficiently

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David Walsh

David Walsh is the co-founder of Dangerous Ambition, a venture firm & startup incubator - and Arsenal, a process design consultancy. He's the author of Source Control, a book on systematic outsourcing, and creator of Muselife.com - a community blog focused on creating passive income streams and location independence. He's currently calling Bangkok his home.

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allofcraigs.com

excellent video - thanks for the quick mention of my site.

keep up the great work

adamkayce

Brilliant video, guys; thanks. I've always been a systems-level thinker, but I'm seeing more and more ways that I've been stuck in unproductive loops, wasting time and being inefficient in general.

Time to go check out all the resources you shared, too, and reign in the inefficiencies.

Thanks again.

Zachary Zadell

Thanks for the video guys. I had been casually following Robert's project over the last few months because he was going down a similar path as I am (freelance development and lifestyle design).

I found his progress to be pretty inspiring. Currently I have plenty of work for the next couple of months but at the moment it is at the whim of one particular client. Robert's progress has definitely inspired me to setup some processes to enable me to find additional work.

Keep up the good work guys!

Casey

Great post and video. Those are some great links and I am stoked to check out some of your older posts. Glad I stumbled across this.

David Walsh

Thanks Casey.. let us know what you're looking for and we'll do our best to cover it.

BakerMvD

Enjoyed the video. Great quality, kick-ass intro, and compelling topic + information.

Becoming bigger fans of both Robert and you guys from stuff like this. Keep it up! :-)

Cody McKibben

Kickass video David! Rob is one of my blog buddies, he's done some really incredible work documenting and breaking down his processes, really excited to see him here and hear more from you guys on this stuff. Keep it up! Thanks

David Walsh

Definitely Cody.. Rob knows what he's doing and isn't afraid to get right into the details and start deconstructing assumptions. Thanks for the note.

brdtrpp

EXACTLY! This is what I have been saying sense I was a little boy. I never quite understood why people keep doing the same thing over and over and over with out regard to streamlining. I am what you would call a Lazy person, when i see the same action done more than three or four times I tend to get a little mad, I always thought "Well why not do it once and make sure it is done properly?" Making what you do into a step by step instruction guide is actually one of the things I do best. I never want to do more than I should be. Even when it comes to my personal life, I tend to make a system out of things just to make it so that I do not always need to be the one doing everything.

Its like this if you don't know how to explain how to do you job, then you can never replace yourself. If you are a machine doing the same thing over and over again> explain it and make it so you can hire a different person to become that machine and you have time to do things you want.

Dave Pinsen

I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to watch the video, but this line you quoted,

"Change comes about as a result of “full acceptance of what is, rather than a striving to be different"

rings true. It reminds me of a line from the movie Jacob's Ladder, which I quoted in a post about the difficulty of moving on, "I have been to harsh". The quote is sort of a spoiler, so if you haven't seen the movie yet and would like to, don't read the last part of my post at the link.

Dave Pinsen

I didn't connect the dots myself at first, but after re-reading the post I linked to above, I think there is pretty interesting, mutually beneficial, business opportunity to be developed between Muselife and one of the individuals I mentioned there. I can elaborate via e-mail, Dave, but suffice it to say for now that one of those fellows seems to have finally groped toward a potentially highly-lucrative niche, almost by accident. He's got the industry-specific knowledge and, I believe, a number of useful contacts, but he's been in job search mode so long that I don't think he gets the mechanics of entrepreneurship like you do.

I think you could make some good money together, and it would also be an interesting case study for you, partly because this guy's niche is the sort of b-to-b niche most of us would never think of, because we haven't been exposed to it (think of the "Fortune 1,000,000" target market claimed by 37 Signals).

derekjohanson

Solid video again guys. Robert your blog is one of my new favorites. It's killer.

Just wanted to chime in with support. Keep it up.

Andrew MacPherson

As one of the many who posed the new business pipeline question, thanks for responding with excellent content grounded in field tested material.

I've actually been working on my new biz pipeline system for a couple weeks now so this mainly validates my existing belief that offloading this piece of the puzzle without hiring a professional sales staff is possible. As sexy as it seems to be the trailblazer, it's nice to understand proven value before investing a ton of time on an idea.

Robert's system sounds like its focus is churning out high quality leads which still require a bit of "closing". In the example, X amount of VA hours resulted in 10 conversations and 2 quality clients. Just out of curiosity, how much additional effort was required to convert the 10 leads to 2 clients? Of course, the underlying question is... Is there still room for systemization of that last mile?

Rob

Andrew,

Psyched you're working on this too! Lets talk, trade tips, etc. Here's my thoughts on the questions you propose.

The short answer, YES, still plenty of room. The upfront work to having a good system to work with VA's and write clear documentation just takes a good bit of work. David's Source Control was a big help there.

The long answer. I at first only worked on an initial hunt and e-mail workflow for my VA's. I had them fill in a few spots that had to be related to the job posting they were working on in the e-mails and in my experiences it worked out well. They only needed to take some key phrase or theme from the post and include it in the e-mail.

I am currently building the workflows to have a VA take someone who responded to a posting and go a step further in qualifying the lead, but for now I'm managing that, however in the past I created semi customizable canned responses depending on what the prospect is looking for to convert them to a client. Since I realized I could have my VA's send out initial e-mails for $3 an hour, I only took prospective gigs that I deemed an easy turnover for this test and sent them those semi customized e-mails. Otherwise, in my old mindset I would jump at all work, and triple my work hours, but not my income. The work I ended up taking were Wordpress set-ups, Photoshop to Wordpress, simple web design, all things I thought were uncomplicated locks for work. The 10 conversations were minimal in time to narrow down because of all the system funnels already set up...process design really does work. I was batching my e-mails so I responded to most of the prospectives at once, had canned e-mails providing what I offered, cost, and agreements, and I went from there. 2 hours maybe? from prospective to narrowed down client. The upfront time that could be expounded on is process of the e-mails the VA's send out and setting up a system for them to qualify leads. Ultimately I'm interested in moving onto some digital product creation, but this was an awesome playground for testing virtual assistance and analyzing the process I use now to get clients. Along the way I found steps I could cut out, or places I was wasting time. It's amazing when you look at it all in a workflow. Check me out at the life design project, I'm finally deconstructing creating passive income...building a platform and creating a process for dealing with work are some upcoming topics.

Muselife - Muse creation, personal outsourcing, ultramobility and the new rich lifestyle.