Evacuation Test for Your Business (Efficiency Hack)

What would happen if you inspired the urgency of evacuation to  streamline your business. Inspired by a true story.

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In this episode:

• The news story I heard that inspired a fast way to declutter my business
• The 3 questions to ask yourself to streamline quickly
• 
  

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ABOUT JERRY POTTER ➜ I'm obsessed with helping online entrepreneurs grow their business in half the time - so they can be done by lunch - and move on to other things that give their life purpose. For me it's spending time with my family, volunteering locally in my community and prioritizing my health. ❤️

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I woke up this morning to thenews that the town of Greer,
Arizona was being evacuated dueto wildfires.
Now I live in Tucson, so it isseveral hours away from us, but
Greer is a city that I've beento almost every year.
So it really kind of hit melike, oh, that's here.
And it got me thinking if I hadto evacuate, what would I take?

(00:24):
it's basically a quick test ofwhat's important to you in your
house and your life, and thatgot me thinking, what if we
asked the same question?
About our businesses.
In this episode, I'm gonnaexplore how the urgency of
evacuation can teach us to run amore focused, high leverage
business.
All right, let's jump into it.

(00:44):
Welcome to Done by LunchEntrepreneurs, where every
episode is designed to help yourun and grow your business in
half the time so you can move onto other things that give you
purpose.
Welcome to Done by LunchEntrepreneurs, where we help you
design your business using highleverage assets, starting with
YouTube for consistent growthand leads, and then moving on
from there.
And I just shared about how acity in Arizona, where I live,

(01:07):
that I've been to many times isbeing evacuated right now as of
this recording because ofwildfires.
And so when I saw that news thismorning on Facebook where I get
news sometimes.
Um, I started making me thinkabout my own life and my own
house.
And it's like if we had toevacuate, and again, to be
clear, this is several hoursaway from us.
We're not in any danger, but ifwe had to evacuate.

(01:30):
What would I take?
And just in case you're curious,I was pretty grateful that most
of the things that are importantto me now are digital, right?
Videos, photos, or they're inthe cloud somewhere.
So I don't know that I wouldneed a lot of stuff necessarily.
I'm also not a big stuff person.
But then I started thinkingabout if you could only keep

(01:51):
certain things in your business.
What would it be?
Because I think this ispotentially a really strong
exercise.
Our businesses can get clutteredreal fast.
The longer you're in businessodds are the more likely your
business is cluttered.
Unless you're one of thosepeople who just loves to burn

(02:12):
things down when you're donewith them.
But otherwise, we all have allof these things out there,
right?
Random landing pages and toolsand software and videos and
other types of content, right?
It's all over the place, and notthat you should go back and
delete that, that's not what Imean by this, but the more chaos
and clutter that we have in ourbusiness.
The harder it is to run it in ahigh leverage way, just like a

(02:35):
house.
Think about that.
If your house, your apartment,your condo, your yurt, wherever
you happen to live, the moreclutter and chaos that's in
there, the harder it is tomaintain, to clean.
And I know some people love amess, and I'm not criticizing
any way you know anybody aboutthe way that they choose to
live, but there is no doubt thatan.

(02:56):
Near empty house.
A minimalist house is easier toclean than a house that is full
of stuff that has to be putaway.
so I wanted to make this episodefor all of us to take a second
to reflect and apply that sameevacuation test to our business.
Now, you can choose to do thisin.
One of two ways.

(03:16):
Okay?
You could choose to do it as inyou have five minutes to decide
what to keep in your business.
Go, or you could take your timewith this idea.
think about the areas of yourbusiness that there are
definitely clutter.
And in just a second I'm gonnagive you three questions to ask
yourself to help out.

(03:36):
But think about things that youhave that are maybe unused
tools, offers that you mighthave out there that barely.
Make any money.
For example, I had a workshopthat I hadn't promoted in years,
and when I was sort of doing myyear end numbers and looking at
everything, I was like, oh, thisworkshop made$27 last year.

(03:57):
And I think I had it linked in acouple of emails and things like
that.
But that's essentially clutter.
I mean, you could say money ismoney, but that's essentially
clutter, um, outdated processes,unnecessary services, you know,
anything like that.
so how do we determine what'struly essential in our business.
I want you to ask yourself threequestions, and I've started

(04:19):
calling this the high leveragefilter'cause here on this show,
we're all about helping youdesign a business with high
leverage assets.
Assets that you get a hugereturn on your investment and
eliminating as many low leverageassets as possible.
Some low leverage.
Things like answering an emailare probably always gonna be
part of business, but we wannado as many high leverage things

(04:40):
and eliminate as many lowleverage things, right?
So three questions to askyourself.
Number one, does this activity,or you could fill in tool or
anything else, does thisactivity directly contribute to
my main goals?
If you've ever read the book, 10x is easier than two x, you

(05:01):
already know this.
But if not, the basic premise isthat if you are trying to make
small jumps that they refer toas two x, like, oh, I wanna make
a little bit more money nextmonth than I made last month, or
maybe over the course of theyear I make twice as much as I
did last year.
There are going to be 50 to ahundred ways for you to reach
that goal.

(05:22):
But if you are trying to make a10 x leap, in other words, a
huge jump, a jump that you.
I kind of believe is possible,but you don't even necessarily
have the skills to do it rightthis second.
Then there's only gonna be twoor three ways to get there.
In other words, if it was like,Hey, how could you increase your
income by 10%?

(05:44):
Then you could probably come upwith a hundred ways to do it.
Right?
But if we said, Hey, how couldyou increase your revenue 10
times as much in the next 18months?
Well, there's only gonna be acouple of ways.
You would even be able toconceptualize about how to do
that.
So same thing when you thinkabout your main goals for your
business, and this is differentfor everybody, but ask if the

(06:06):
thing you're doing is directlyleading to that.
Because if it's not, I.
It's probably low leverage.
Right.
And can probably be eliminatedor outsourced or something along
those lines.
so number one, does thisactivity, uh, employee
contractor tool, whatever,directly contribute to your

(06:26):
biggest goals?
Number two, question to ask.
If we stopped this today, wouldit significantly impact our
clients or revenue?
So I love this question becauseso often we tend to do the same
things over and over and overagain in our business, and
especially if it's a small task,we literally don't give it a

(06:50):
second thought, right?
Oh, it's Tuesday.
It's on my calendar.
Oh, it's Thursday afternoon.
I have to go do this.
We do things like that in ourlife too, and we never stop to
think, if I stopped this, wouldthere really be any consequence?
So again, the first question isabout, is this thing I'm doing
leading to the good stuff?
The second question is, if Istopped this, would there be any

(07:11):
bad thing?
That would possibly happen.
So obviously if you stopsomething and it significantly
impacted your clients, yourrevenue, things like that, well
then you don't wanna stop thatactivity.
But what if instead you stoppedand nothing happened or almost
nothing happened?
Like if I stopped offering that$27 product that I sold one of

(07:33):
last year, and I think zero theyear before, well, I probably
don't need to give that anyenergy whatsoever.
Not even the customer servicethat might come up around
something like that.
And the third question to ask inour high leverage filter is this
process or tool making ouroperations more efficient or

(07:53):
just adding complexity?
Just before I recorded thisepisode at a great conversation
on our done by lunch Mastermindwith some other entrepreneurs
that are in there, and we weretalking about this idea of what
would this look like?
If it were easy, so if you findyourself doing something in your
business or using something, aprocess, a tool, um, again, this

(08:16):
could be A person, a contractor,an assistant, different things
like that.
Is it making your operationsmore efficient or is it just
adding complexity?
When I think about makingYouTube videos for my channel, I
used to set up lights and use areally nice DSLR, actual camera

(08:36):
record to a memory card.
Once it was done, check thefootage, then take everything
down that I'd set up.
Go and take the memory card, putit in the computer, upload all
the footage, make sure it alltransferred okay.
Like it was a really messy,complex process.
Now, when I first started onYouTube, I recorded usually 15
videos in a day.
'cause that was the only way itfit into my life.

(08:56):
So I didn't notice at the time,but if I did that now.
It would be way overly complex.
So now you know what I do.
I use my webcam, I use themicrophone that's already
attached to my computer, and Irecord right into my editing
software.
And then when I'm done, it'sthere.
It's nice and simple.
So that is a process that makesthings simple.

(09:19):
It does not make it morecomplex.
So think about those.
Number one, does this activityor offer or person or whatever
directly contribute to your biggoals?
Number two, if you stop thistoday, would it significantly
impact?
Your clients, your revenue,anything.
And number three is the processor tool or whatever it might be
making your operations moreefficient, or is it just adding

(09:41):
complexity?
So ask yourself those questions.