Interview with Sam Carpenter Host: Bart...

100 Coaching Tips.com Sam Carpenter Interview

©2012 by 100 Coaching Tips LLC 1

Interview with Sam Carpenter

Host: Bart Baggett

Date of Interview July 24, 2012

Part of the 100CoachingTips.com

Interview Series

©2012 by 100 Coaching Tips LLC

All Rights Reserved



Bart Baggett Interview with Sam Carpenter

Bart: Good evening everybody, this is Bart Baggett, 100 Coaching Tips. Thanks for

being on the phone call. I must tell you, tonight’s guest is going to be extraordinary.

He’s authors of one of my all-time favorite books and I specifically thought of him

first when we picked our 24 most successful coaches, consultants, and experts for

the 100 Coaching Tips series.

If you’re new to 100 Coaching Tips, thank you for joining us. We have lots of people

calling from all over the country and all over the world. What we do is help coaches

make more money, have more time, be a little bit more savvy with their marketing

effort, and in that effort, we have attempted to get some of the smartest and

brightest minds to bring some resources which you might not otherwise know about

into your life and into your client’s life.

And tonight is no different. Sam Carpenter is my guest tonight and we’ll give you

more information tonight how to learn more about Sam, and in fact, he’s been so

generous, he’s going to gift you an entire copy of his latest book, which is in the

third edition, both in audio and a book format. So I’ll have to tease you and you’ll

have to hang around until the bottom of the phone call to get that link.

The book is called Work The System, I actually read it and owned it before I met

Sam, and so I am sincerely a fan and evangelist of your work.

Sam, you have built companies, you have sold companies, you have turned a 70-

hour work week into 2 hours, yet you make more profits. Welcome to the phone call

with 100 Coaching Tips, how are you tonight?

Sam Carpenter: Thanks, Bart, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

Bart: Your book is doing so well among business owners, individuals, entrepreneurs,

and you’re gifting it to us and it’s all about systems. Why did you write this book

and how did you go from being a 70-hour burned out executive into living the life of

leisure, so to speak?

Sam Carpenter: Well, I went through an epiphany at 50 years of age about how I

see the world. And I won’t go through the whole story with you, Bart, but I had a

nightmare of a life and it was more like 100 hours a week there toward the end, 110

hours a week.



So I had an epiphany that the world wasn’t as, really put together the way I had

perceived it for 50 years. And most of us see the world as a, probably look around

and there’s all this stuff—there’s these trees, there’s these cars, there’s the TV,

there’s the spouse. And there’s all this stuff going on and we see it as one big

conglomerated mass, and that’s inaccurate. We can go a level deeper, what I

realized in this severe mental state that I was in, physical and mental, almost death

state, was that the world is actually a collection of systems. A collection of

independent systems.

For instance, in your business, how you answer the phone is a system. How you

make payroll is a system. How you make a sales presentation is a separate system.

And they don’t have anything to do with each other, although they’re interlocked.

And what I did was, I took my horribly dysfunctional business, the same business I

have today, 28 years ago, and now 13 years ago, I took this horribly dysfunctional

business and started going through the processes one by one by one, fixing each

separate system, each separate process. Because our world is a collection of

systems.

And every result in our life—and I like to walk when I’m talking, Bart, and I’m

walking by a big Ponderosa pine tree, this Ponderosa pine tree to my right is just like

how anybody answers the phone. The end result was preceded by a 1, 2, 3-step

linear progression of events, and that’s the way the world works in reality. And so

most people spend their time shuffling around the bad results of unmanaged

systems. And what I profess, and I know deep in my gut that’s true, is that we need

to spend our time in the processes directing toward the result we want. But if we

spend the time tweaking the processes over and over and over again, we will get the

results we want.

And so now I work two hours a week just because I want to, at my main telephone

answering service, of all things, and I have all the free time I want. And what do I

do with it? I talk to people like you about this thing that I love, and I climb

mountains and I do whatever I want in my life. My relationships and my health are

suburb as well because I spent all my time in the processes that lead up to the

various results. And 99 out of 100 people don’t do that.

So this has to do with a new way of looking at life, a more accurate way, what I call

going down in the basement where—your results are on the first floor—you go down

to the basement and work on the machinery that produces those results up on the

first floor. There’s all kinds of analogies I could give you, but that essentially is it.



Bart: Well, let me reset it, we’ve got about 20 new callers that just joined us, and

thank you for coming.

My name’s Bart Baggett, on the phone with me is author of Work The System, Sam

Carpenter and entrepreneur, who has figured out a way to turn a 100-hour-a-week,

you know, crises management-type business, into 2 hours a week and systematized.

And specifically for us, Sam, I’ve asked you to sort of how can we relate this idea of

systems, not only to the individual coach, the business consultant, which I know you

are a business consultant, you bring this theology, this theory, into businesses and

you help them implement it. But also how our individual coaches can help their

individual clients on a day-to-day basis, as well as their corporate clients or their

CEO, you know, executive coaching, to implement this.

Because I have found, and I’m speaking strictly as a fan of yours and as a convert

way before we met via teleconference-type model, is when I implemented the

strategies that you talked about, it was the last time I had to worry about that

particular piece of my business. And although it sounds painful, it sounds un-sexy,

the idea of creating a procedure and a system for all parts of your life doesn’t sound

fun at all, but I guess the benefits far outweigh the pain of actually learning to

systematize.

Would you say that’s fair for most clients? There’s resistance at first because it’s

uncomfortable and then they realize they got all this freedom and now they want to

worship you and thank you?

Sam Carpenter: [Laughs] Worship me, now I’m sounding like a guru. That’s true,

what you said, is true. There’s some heavy lifting at first, but I tell people, they say,

“How long will it take to see results?” And I tell them a couple weeks maybe, maybe

sooner, maybe three weeks, and once you start seeing results, you realize that

you’ve struck a deeper element of reality.

For instance, I’m up here in Oregon right now, Bart, walking by this beautiful pond.

And the trees are all around and there’s a road over there, very quiet. But what I

see as I walk here down this path is hundreds, thousands of separate systems. Not

“the world” but separate systems.

And what happens is, you start looking at all aspects of your life from this deeper

reality, and then it is no longer a chore.



The first part of my two-part book talks about this event that needs to happen called

“Getting it.” Getting this idea that the world is a collection of independent systems,

and once that happens, you never want to leave. It’s not work. You get the results

you want, whether it’s health, relationships, or business, because you’re working on

the machinery that creates the results, you never want to go back to what it was

before.

I had this insight in the middle of the night 13 years ago and I have never gone back

even for a split second once I saw this reality. So this isn’t Sam Carpenter’s “10

Steps To Success,” this is about a change in how one views the world, a more

accurate vision of how the world works.

So yes, first you’ve got to get it, and then you move on from there.

Bart: So let me drill this down. If you’ve read any self-help books or even small

business books, what I think your system is, and excuse me for simplifying it and

correct me if I’m wrong, but what Michael Gerber taught, you know, 20 years ago,

about the E-Myth, that it’s not, an entrepreneur, all of a sudden you have more time,

you have less time. His famous phrase, “You work on your business and not in your

business.”

But what I found, your particular theology, is you are pragmatic. You give

spreadsheets, you give examples, you get to the heavy lifting, where I thought

Michael Gerber, although amazing and breakthrough for its time, left me saying,

“That’s great as an idea, but how do I implement it?” And you seem to have taken

the approach that anybody, from whether you’re a one-on-one coach to running a,

you know, a company as complicated as yours with hundreds of employees, could

implement systems to really free up your spare time and get to doing what you love.

What are your thoughts on Michael Gerber compared to what your system is?

Sam Carpenter: Yeah, it’s interesting. I get all these unsolicited testimonials in it,

an inordinately high percentage say, “I read Michael Gerber,” who was my

inspiration, by the way, but they say, “I read Michael Gerber, this is the next logical

step, thank you for carrying it on to how to do it.” So you’re right, I think Michael

Gerber’s book gives in essence of the insight, but doesn’t carry through the way

mine does to the 1, 2, 3 steps, what the documentation should be, our various

insights on specific events that may happen. So, yes, you’re right. And I will pat

myself on the back for that.



Bart: Well, let me bring your story down to tactics. You run one of, you own, one of

the most complicated, labor-intensive, crises management-type of businesses that

any of us could own. You run a 24-hour phone room where every call is important,

every call, every client is urgent, and there is very little room for error or bad

customer service. That would probably explain why you were working 100 hours a

week, is that correct?

Tell me, you know, in a condensed version, of this story of how you ran this phone

room and then what we can take away as much smaller businesses.

Sam Carpenter: Well, right. I called it a caldron for chaos, 24/7 operation paying

people at a low hourly rate. Literally 1,000 accounts we have now. Back then it was

300. There were things going wrong all the time. All these spinning wheels that

could spin out of control. And so I had to intentionally manage those processes to

get to the point where we are today, which is in the last quarter we had, we

processed 15,322 messages for every customer reported error, which was a new

record for us. If you can imagine taking name, number, a lot of times an emergency

call, we are a private 911 essentially, relaying that call properly and doing that

15,300 times before somebody said, “Hey, you spelled my name wrong or you got

the number wrong,” that’s the level of intensity of, that’s the level of quality we

needed to reach so we don’t get in legal trouble. And much less lose accounts and

so forth.

So that applies to all our medical accounts and our veterinary accounts and hospice

accounts and funeral home accounts—we’ve got to get it right. And that’s what the

book centers around, as you remember, Bart, in the book. The theme, the thread of

the book is my actual business and then I stretch out from there to take care of any

business anywhere, any kind of business this will work in. And if you are a one-

person operation, absolutely these processes apply to you, too.

Bart: Well, it’s interesting. I run a small office in Los Angeles, we’ve got four or five

businesses in a room, but we do have employees here, you know, in our space, as

well as virtual employees.

And recently I saw a stack of checks sitting on my executive director’s desk that had

not been deposited, and I thought about you. Because I think the check depositing

is what started you on this obsessive quest to create a printed written system for

everything.



So tell me about how you decided that running to the bank was an inefficient system

and if you could just get that one system on paper, your whole life might change.

Sam Carpenter: Yeah, and mine did. And obsessive quest is a great phrase to use.

But what happened was I had this insight in the middle of the night and I asked

myself, “Okay, of all these separate processes I see now for the first time, my

business is a collection of processes, which one is the most problematic?” Well, it

had to do with getting the money to the bank, just like you’re talking about your

stack of checks. Back then we’d get, oh, 20-30 checks a day and they had to go into

the accounting system and credit the account that paid the bill properly, which we

had trouble doing.

And what had happened a few weeks before, this is a horrible thing, but one of our

managers took a $3,000 deposit, which was a lot of money back in those days, and

went to take it to the bank on the way to pick up her kid at day care, was late

picking up her kid at day care, and those day care people don’t like that. Anybody

who drops kids off and picks them up knows that. And she forgot to make the

deposit and not only that, in getting the kid, the deposit fell down under the seat of

her car, to be found three weeks later by her, with all apologies and everything, and

I didn’t even know the money was missing.

Bart: Right.

Sam Carpenter: So we had all kinds of problems with getting the money in the bank

and so we took the three managers I had at that time, and me included, two

managers and me, we put our heads together and said, “How do you do it? How do

you do it? How do you do it?” And we took our best ideas and put them into this

53-step process of taking a check in the front door and finally getting it up to the

bank and, you know.

And so we all three agreed, okay, this is the best possible process, let’s apply it

exactly this way every time and let’s not forget to tweak it as we see better ways of

doing various aspects of it. Maybe step 27 needs to be tweaked a little bit, or maybe

we have to add some steps.

And we had this perfect, after a week or two of tweaking this thing, we had this

perfect, perfect process and then I no longer had to do it anymore, because the

three of us were doing it, I was spending two hours a week for the previous 15 years

doing it, I never did it again. And at that point, I realized I was on the right track.



And then we took these other processes, here are 300 separate systems and all of

them having 1 or 2 or more subsystems, that we documented and tweaked and

that’s where we spend our time now, working on the processes of the business. We

literally are working on the processes of the business, not shuffling around the bad

result.

And I’ve done that in every aspect of my life, Bart, health and relationships and

everything else. And if you’re working on the machinery that creates the results,

you can make that machinery create the results that you want, it’s that simple.

Bart: So let me drill this down. You took one system of depositing checks, which

everyone on the phone call, if you get paid by checks, you have this issue of getting

a deposit, whether it’s taking a snapshot with your phone and sending it to your

bank electronically, or physically taking to the bank, just like we still do in our office

sometimes. You start with that process, but then you think, okay, what other

aspects are you doing—this is not about delegation, Sam, so let me get some clear.

This is not about outsourcing, this is not about just like delegating. It’s about

creating a system so that you no longer have to do it, worry about doing it, or

whoever is doing it can be replaced instantaneously.

Talk about the distinction between, you know, buying back your time and all the

nonessential components that you do. So if you love coaching one on one, or you

love speaking in front of a room, that’s what you do, but all the other pieces of the

puzzle can be delegated.

Is it delegation or is it systemization or is it more?

Sam Carpenter: It’s delegation, automation or discarding. Those are the three big

words.

Now, I have a copywriter friend, he broke his copywriting task, which of course is a

solo, usually a solo thing, he broke it down into 18 steps, it had to do with

researching a new client and asking certain questions, and he was able to delegate

to an assistant 17 of those 18 steps.

Bart: Wow.

Sam Carpenter: And he sat down with her total results and took what used to be a

40-hour copywriting job and made it 4 hours. Now we’re multiplying our time. So

what if you had an assistant at $12 an hour and you’re worth $200, and instead of



using 40 hours of your time to create that income, you use 4 hours—and he swears

by it. So he can handle a whole lot more accounts in the course of the week and,

you know, multiply his income by five to ten times by doing it that way. He’s paying

attention to the systems and the processes. And he doesn’t have to do the research,

he doesn’t have to do a lot of that.

So for our coaches out there that are listening, so where do you make your money?

My guess is one on one with the client. What has making a deposit to do with that?

And how can you multiply your time? Maybe you need to have group meetings for

some of these executives, at a lower rate, increasing your hourly rate to yourself.

There’s all kinds of things you can do when you look at what you do, when you look

at what you do with a system process mentality. Absolutely.

Bart: Sam, one of the techniques I did on my staff and myself in the last year, and

again, I’m a big evangelist of your book, is we had a calendar, kind of a daily

summary, in every ten-minute increments. And I forced them, against all kinds of

resistance, to write down what they were doing every ten minutes.

Sam Carpenter: Yeah.

Bart: And I also wrote down what I was doing every ten minutes. And this is a huge

awakening. Because I didn’t realize how much time I wasted on email, you know, by

shuffling through papers, checking bank account balances, all these things which

were not billable hours, weren’t things that necessarily made me money, but until I

saw it in black and white, I didn’t know what I was wasting time.

And the second point I want to make to what I’ve used, is once I create a system for

something, let’s for example, a refund on a credit card, something very simple, you

know, someone refunds something, you know, and you have to go refund it. Once

that was in writing, I never, no one ever had to ask me a question. I would say,

“Look, here is the procedure manual, section seven, how to issue a refund,” and I no

longer had to be contacted.

Is this the typical of the kind of people that you’re dealing with in your consulting

practice?

Sam Carpenter: Brilliant, brilliant. Yes, first of all, you have to do what Jairek

Robbins calls “day chunking,” and he talks about scheduling every 15 minutes. But

in a sense, what you’re saying is exactly what has to happen. You’ve got to go



through and analyze what you’re doing and see what can be delegated and

automated and believe me, there’s a ton of it. A ton of it that can be done.

And so, yeah, that’s what you have to do. You have to do that and this is the

process for anybody and I don’t care what kind of business they’re in, they’ve got to

go through and see what they can delegate out and remember, always remembering

what they like to do most, which for executive coaches or life coaches is probably

talking to other people, disseminating information, getting satisfaction out of that,

and always learning something back.

Bart: And I think the things that they may not like to do, like posting on Facebook,

you know, writing newsletters, you know, scheduling appointments, all the little

details, processing credit cards, you’re saying that all those things, that they would

just take, you know, pen to pad or, you know, a Word document and start creating a

system, they may never have to do those again. I mean, that’s kind of what you’re

saying.

Sam Carpenter: Right. Yeah, it’s magical, writing things down is magical. There’s

something about seeing the 1, 2, 3, 4 steps in a process in front of you on paper that

helps you analyze that process. But even more than that, writing down what you do

and just looking at it and saying, “Do I really need to do that? Could somebody else

do that or could I somehow automate that?” For instance, bill paying with Bill Payer,

which everybody uses now with their bank. We did that 12 years ago. And those

are the kinds of things that can be automated or delegated or deleted. I love the

word delete. We love it in my office when we delete a whole process that’s just not

necessary. Boy, does that free up the time.

But any individual can do this. And don’t forget, for our coaches, the system

strategy for their clients is powerful. Powerful! If you want to see your CEO make

dramatic physical improvement, try having them take apart what they do during the

day or ask them, what process, what do you do that’s just driving you crazy and

you’re fire killing this thing all the time? What is it? Let’s work on that. Okay, let’s

write out the steps to that and help them cure that one problem and you’ve probably

got a client for a year or two as you work through with them, give them my book, go

work with them one on one on that and you got a lifetime client, a client who really

would appreciate you.

Bart: And let me reemphasize what he said. If you’re a coach and you’ve got a

client, especially one that owns a business of any size, being a systems consultant

can turn that short-term client into a lifelong client. And I know this for a fact



because the idea of systemizing some of my businesses, one of which is 15 years

old, was overwhelming. So I actually hired someone who had claimed on a resume

she was a good systems. And over the course of six months, we documented, she

formatted, she re-formatted, she interviewed employees, and she helped me create

a procedure manual. And she got paid, I think it was $25 an hour for 4 to 6 months

over and over and over. And it was very worth it for me, because now all these

systems which previously were gone if the employee quit—you know how that is in a

small business.

Sam Carpenter: Oh, man.

Bart: Now I don’t even know how to check my email because all the passwords are

in her head. That’s gone. I can replace anybody now. And secondly, she got a

consulting job for six months. So don’t underestimate the power of what he’s

saying.

By the way, Sam’s book is $17 and you can buy them in bulk. I’m also going to give

you a URL where you can download it for free and listen to the audio book for free

and then if you decide it’s something you want to pass on to your clients, but that is

a huge tip. I mean, if you would help implement systems thinking with your clients,

they will value, because every system you document, you’ve given them back an

hour of your life. So within a few months, you’ve bought them back time with their

kids and time with their family.

So Sam, I’m going to give them the URL now where they can get your book, but

don’t leave the phone call just to go grab the book because it will be there when we

hang up. The URL is 100CoachingTips.com/Sam, S-a-m. And of course, on the

phone with me is Sam Carpenter, author of the book.

Now, Sam, this is in the third edition, which means you’ve sold thousands of these

and received lots and lots of feedback. What’s been your favorite testimonial? What

do people experience implementing these systems?

Sam Carpenter: Well, my favorite testimonial, I would have to put in a generic

sense and it would say, because I do get this quite a bit in one way or another, they

say, “Thanks for changing my life.” You can imagine the satisfaction you get out of

that, somebody saying, “You changed my life.” Oh, my God, what’s better than

that? Not much. That’s my favorite testimonial and obviously they’re **** change

it for the better.



Bart: Yeah, for those of us who are in the self-help business, I mean, sometimes we

get that because we give them a technique or overcome their fears. But I got to tell

you, the idea of creating a procedure manual is not sexy, it doesn’t sound fun, but

you’ve created a rabid following of people who say, “This idea can transform me.”

Let’s start with something very simple. I read something in your book about how to

use systems, so let’s use an example. You said that in your company, no one could

agree on how to put the toilet roll together, is that, did I get that metaphor correct?

Or that example?

Sam Carpenter: Well, that wasn’t connected to my company, that was on a personal

level.

Bart: Okay.

Sam Carpenter: But I did ask my management staff, after we had implemented the

strategy many years before, and my people stay with me, I’ve got some people

who’ve been with me over 20 years, I said, “How do you people install your toilet roll

paper at home?” And they said with the leading edge coming over the top, because

they’ve got this systems mentality in their head. Usually the toilet paper roll coming

off the top makes the most sense simply because it’s easiest to reach.

Now, this is a great illustration, and it’s a little ridiculous, obviously, but there are a

couple of, I had a couple of readers write me emails, they were furious, and they

were poking holes in the whole thing because they said, “Obviously you don’t have

cats or small children in your house.” So, can you visualize a cat clawing the thing

and creating—so that’s why you put it under the bottom. So in my last addition of

my book, I said, “Here’s a caveat, if you have a kid who’s two years old or younger,

or you have a cat, you might want to run it underneath, because that’s the system

that will work best in your house. Otherwise the kid or the cat is just pawing the

whole roll down to a useless pile of paper beside the toilet.” That’s a pretty funny

example.

Bart: Well, it’s such a simple example, but sometimes I come into our restroom and

I’m like, why did somebody not take the 10 seconds to put this back on the roll?

And I don’t want to type up procedures in my own house, that seems kind of silly,

but I do start thinking about the dishes, what’s the best way to put it in the

dishwasher. So you’ve kind of made me start thinking that everything could be a

small system and I think I would be a little anal retentive to type up a system and

stick it on the back of the toilet, I think that would be a little maybe rude for my



family, but in the business, do you find that it’s rude or that it’s refreshing that they

have a blueprint to go by? How do the employees respond to the systems thinking?

Sam Carpenter: Yeah, they love the blueprint, because they no longer have to be

mind readers or fortune tellers. So everybody in my office knows exactly what’s

expected of them and how a process should be performed.

And it is especially germane to how we answer the phone for all these thousand

different accounts, every one of them completely different from the next one, is they

have a language they follow for delivering the message—little insight into an

answering service—there’s a process for delivering the message. It’s separate on

every account, but it does go 1) you try this, if that doesn’t work you do this, 2), you

still don’t find the on-call person, you do number 3. And they love it that if they

follow the process exactly how it is, and there’s a problem, they are not in trouble.

It’s the system that was the problem.

And so what happens in an office like this is, you don’t go back to finding fault with

people, you find fault with the mechanical system, you tweak the system, and the

problem doesn’t happen again. And so that makes for a very serene office

environment, a very calm and relaxed place to be. It’s a safe haven. My office is a

safe haven for some of my employees who don’t have it so swell at home. They

come to the office and they know they’re not going to get in trouble.

So an occasional mistake is made, but big deal, it’s not all day long and there’s none

of this boss to employee tension, it just isn’t in my office at all.

Bart: Because if there’s a mistake made, you simply say, “Let’s look at the system,

let’s see what happened,” and they say, “Well, Sam, this caller had a problem which

was never discussed in your manual.” And you say, “Okay, let’s put it in the

procedure manual.”

Sam Carpenter: Exactly.

Bart: So you don’t criticize, you say, let’s just add to it.

Sam Carpenter: Yeah, you tweak the system. Remember, every moment of the

day, we’re spending in the systems, not in the results, the results take care of

themselves. When we get a bad result, we walk back to the system, red flag, tweak

the system so it doesn’t happen again.



And instead of things wearing out, you know how things wear out in life? The

systems get better and better and better with time, the success rate goes up and up

and up constantly. It’s a constant circle of improvement, rather than decline.

And you’re right about the home thing, you don’t want to be Nick. I got a friend who

was interested in writing up a procedure for how his wife should do the dishes.

Bart: Oops.

Sam Carpenter: Don’t even—look, man, first of all, you should do the dishes if she’s

doing the cooking, but that’s a personal thing, but you don’t want to go to the place

where you’re putting instructions up for this and that and this and that. However,

for my bike rack on my car, I have a procedure set up, the first part of the rack goes

so many inches and part of an inch back from the front of the windshield and the

same on the other side and the second part of the rack goes even farther back. I

need those details. We need to write down a passcode to the wi-fi unit, you know,

the router. We need to write certain things down. And we need to have, of course,

shopping lists or you just, so you get everything. But the other stuff, it is a little

ridiculous to write procedures up for how you do every element of your personal life,

that’s nuts. But business it’s not.

Bart: Now, you told me that you, not only now that you run your company, you

have time to do some high-end consulting. You’ve got companies with thousands of

employees that you help. Tell me how you go into a really big company and help

start at the top, you know, get the system thinking, and then also, how would you

translate that if you were to, you know, coach someone with just, you know, one

virtual assistant and a coaching practice. Is there a difference in approach or is it

basically fundamentally the same?

Sam Carpenter: Fundamentally the same. Now, we just started with 150-person

consulting company in a large city up here in the west. And what we did was we

went in one day, met with the executive staff and explained to them, well, we

insisted that they read the book. The owner of the company, which was a major

shareholder, read the book, loved the book, and that’s why I was there. But his two

partners needed to read the book and so did their ten managers. And so we went in

that first day, reiterated what was in the book, “This is what we can do for your

company, does it sound good?” “Yes.” And then we say, “Well, there’s mechanical

stuff that needs to happen, you know what it is, you read the book, and let’s

proceed.”



And so we have this four to six month period where we will absolutely transform this

company and probably add 200 grand to their bottom line per month, I’m quite

confident we will.

For a single person, well, how much do you make in a day? What if you could

become 100% more efficient? You would make twice as much for the same amount

of work, does that sound good? And so, yeah, in that extra 50%, or that extra

100%, is the fun money. You use the first 100% to pay for the rent and pay for the

car payment and so forth. That extra 100%, when we double your income, is the

fun money. And so that could be a 20 times increase in fun money, and that’s how

we start that process. But we really insist that people read the book and see if it

makes sense first. And it usually does. And then we just implement the strategy in

the book.

I’ve had thousands of people implement right out of the book without having us

come in and do the full scale consulting, which costs hundreds of thousands of

dollars.

But the book, most of our testimonials come from people who change their life by

just reading the book and doing that it tells them.

And it all makes sense. There’s nothing mystical or esoteric about it. Once you get

the systems mindset, it makes total sense and you say to yourself, “Why didn’t I get

this before?” And then you implement it, and then you see the success, and you’re a

changed person, your life will never be the same. And I’ve had enough, hundreds

and hundreds of testimonials that say that, to know absolutely in my gut that that’s

true.

And of course, I started with this, with my own theory and my own experience, but

it’s sure nice to have all these testimonials come on down through the four years

since the book was first published in Spring of 2008. It’s awesome! I love it, and

this works.

Bart: Yeah, and again, Sam’s been generous enough to just give the book to us,

and to me and to people on the Coaching Tips website. So no fee, just go to

100CoachingTips.com/Sam, you can download the audio book and/or the hardcopy

book, and you can then see how you apply it to your own life. And I really think that

many people on this phone call could help their clients apply the systems and extend

that into much longer term relationship.



Sam, here’s a problem I had with my employees. I found that they didn’t want to

write down what they did. They resisted it, I had to actually create a bonus

structure for every new chapter that they finished. So if they finished a system, let’s

say it’s putting our, you know, credit card manually charged through or spooling a

newsletter, or, you know, creating a blog post or Facebook post, whatever the

system was, I had to create some kind of bonus because it always seemed to be the

last thing they wanted to do.

And for the employees that, my oldest employees—not oldest in age, but the ones

who had been there the longest—they were resistant because they didn’t want to

take this proprietary information on their head, and I think it was the fear of being

replaced. They thought, “Oh, my God, if I really put this all on paper, then he’ll

know how to do it without me.”

Is this a common struggle between management and employees and how do you

address that?

Sam Carpenter: It really is, and IT people are really prone to what I call build an

empire, a little closed empire. You can’t fire me because all the secrets of the

empire are in my head.

And so the key to this, if you have more than one employee, is to make the

presentation to all your employees so nobody feels singled out. Okay? That’s the

key.

And get them to understand the methodology. Get them to read the book and

understand, we really need the input from the bottom up, to management,

management okays the input, and we’ve got a better procedure passed back on

down to the front lines. And if they really understand what you’re trying to do and

where you want to go, that’s awesome. That’s the way you get people to climb on

board rather than to fight it. Make sense?

Bart: Yeah, it does make sense and I just have found that’s real interesting,

because I almost had to make bribes to get these things written. Because some of

the things I couldn’t write myself, you know, because I didn’t actually know the

procedure. And of course, secondly, I’d want to, I’d want it written, but I’d want

them to help.

And the other thing that you say is that after you get the procedures written, they

need to keep revising them. And I had the situation because I got one virtual



employee in the Philippines, and some of the procedures he wrote are no longer out

of date. Let’s say it was change shopping cart, or we changed, you know,

broadcasting software, they’re out of date. And he seems to not want to update it as

if he didn’t have the power to update it. And I kept trying to empower him, to say,

“Look, here’s the Word file, if it’s out of date, change it. If it’s cell C43 is not right,

it’s C45, change it.”

What is your policy when you have people vested in the process rather than, you

know, making them do it out of punishment?

Sam Carpenter: Well, yeah, the punishment thing never works, the empowering

thing always works and that sounds all Utopian and everything, but it’s really true.

If they’re creating the procedures and working with them, they will be bought into

them.

So what do you do with somebody who just refuses to do it? I had a lot of staff

turnover when I first started implementing this. I wasn’t quite as smooth as I am

now, we’re able to hire people who are inclined to be system thinkers, engineers,

code writers, people like that naturally get this.

But listen, Bart, this is America, and if you’re not running a union shop, and

somebody just flat out refuses to do it, fire them, get rid of them, and get somebody

in there who will do the job. This is your company. I got a CEO in a very large

company that we’re consulting to and he refuses to fire anybody. I said, “This

particular person is costing you about 100 grand a month!”

Bart: Wow.

Sam Carpenter: You know, this $80,000-a-year employee. And he says, “Well,

she’s been with me for a long time.” I said, “She’s subterfuge, man, come on!” And

so there’s a lot of people that feel this sense of intimidation or if they let this person

go, the whole world will fall apart—believe me, it usually doesn’t.

You got to get people in there who will do what you ask them to do for their $14 an

hour or their $22 an hour, that’s how it works. This is capitalism. “Here, I will give

X-number of dollars an hour to do what I ask you to do. This is America, if you don’t

want to do that, then quit or I will let you go.” Sounds brutal, but that’s how the

world works. I give you money, you do what I ask you to do.



I know I’m nutshelling this and it sounds a little harsh, but that is the truth. You

never approach somebody in that way, it’s just the way it is. “Here’s your job

description, I want you to do this, know that if you don’t do it, I’m probably going to

just have to get somebody else to do it.” So you got to be a leader. This is not a

democracy still.

But when the people on the front lines are bought into it, they understand their input

is valuable. That everybody that does the same task they do is doing it the same

way and they’re all invested in making this process better and better and better,

then you don’t have that problem.

So we don’t have a problem in my office. We’re able to hire people who are systems

oriented. And even if maybe they aren’t as much as I would want them to, when

they come in, they see how it works and they do it that way because they’re making

double with my answering service what they make with any other answering service

and they’re only working 40 hours a week, not 60, 70 hours. And it’s a nice place to

work. And they know that the reason for that is everything is structured, everything

is process oriented, and their input is valuable.

So you got to get to that place and so many of these people are building empires in

the little business and the leader of the organization is allowing it. That needs to

stop.

Bart: Now, just on a brief, in your company, you pay almost double what your

competitors pay for wage, yet you don’t work but two hours a week on the business,

your employees are happier, and you still turn a profit, compared to your

competitors. Now, how is it possible you can pay more wages, work less time, and

have a more efficient process, judged by metrics, which means you get awards for

the least number of mistakes per phone call in your phone room? What is the magic

behind this efficiency, as well as the ability to hire better employees and pay them

better wages?

Sam Carpenter: Well, that’s very simple and it’s one word, but let me add this

before I give you that word. We do an almost 40% net per month, okay? And the

industry standard for answering service is 3%, all right?

Bart: Wow.

Sam Carpenter: So it’s an astounding step away from the industry standards. And

the one word is, ready for it? Efficiency. We’re tremendously efficient. We get way



more done with fewer people and we don’t have customer service complaints, thus

loosing accounts, it’s just called super efficiency. And most businesses are burning

up their bottom line in smoke, killing the same fires all over again, the person leaves

with the passcodes in their head, you got to go through—you’re spending all day

long fixing problems and killing fires. We don’t kill fires in our office. Like you said,

we have, we do well over 100,000 messages a month and we usually get 5 to 7

complaints and it’s usually somebody spaced out or grumpy with—we’re not going

back and having to fix things all the time. They’re little things that lead us to

improve the systems even more.

So it’s efficiency and that’s the word that needs to stick in everybody’s head.

Efficiency means a better bottom line, it means less turnover, it means happier

employees, and it means that the leader doesn’t have to be there all day long. It’s

running itself, it’s a machine. I like to say it’s a machine. A money producing

machine.

Bart: And if you own a business, that would be the purpose of being in business, to

have a net profit, not to work yourself 100 hours a week and come up with no extra

profit, clearly.

Sam Carpenter: If you don’t have a machine that you can sell without you going

along with it, you have a job. Okay? That’s all you have. And Gerber was very

good about that. Absolutely you have a job if you have to be there all the time.

But if you’re going to have a job, if you are a life coach, that is a job, at least make a

lot of money doing it by maximizing your time and maximizing your bottom line.

Ultimately if you’re smart and you want to do it, you get an assistant or two, and

pretty soon you’ve got other coaches out there selling what you sell. And you are

stepping back. And if you are working 40 hours a week, at least you’re making a

heck of a lot of money working those 40 hours a week, instead of surviving.

Bart: If you make 300 bucks an hour and you’re making 40 hours a week, or you’re

working, then you should be making great money. But most people that work 40

hours a week are really coaching 18 to 20 and the other 20 hours are spent on

administration, which I think a lot of people don’t feel like they can delegate, they

don’t feel like they can hire a full-time assistant. How do you get somebody out of

this sole-proprietor mentality to begin to see that their time is money and they can

make far more if they document their system and hire someone for those? How do

you get them to release that self-proprietor mentality where they have to do

everything themselves because they don’t trust anybody?



Sam Carpenter: Well, you go back to what we talked about earlier and you write out

every 10 minutes, every 15 minutes what you do during the day and then you

critically look at that list. And ask yourself, is there anything here I really need to be

doing? Would I really want to be spending a half hour doing this if I could be doing a

half hour over here actually making money? Because administrative stuff doesn’t

make money. Taking the checks to the bank does not create income. But spending

time with that client and becoming really good at it is what makes money. So find a

way to make more time doing what you do best and incidentally, probably what you

love to do best, if you’re a life coach or an executive coach. Or whatever you do. Do

what you do best more.

Bart: And delegate the rest and you can’t delegate it until you systematize it.

Sam Carpenter: You can’t delegate it unless you see the systems of your life. Until

you see the separate systems, the getting it part of my book is the first of the three

parts. Until you get that your system, your life is a collection of systems, you can’t

start to do it. You got to see every element of your business as separate from the

other elements, which goes against the whole holistic thinking, you know, that we

are all one thing, that I was a big part of back in the ‘60’s.

It’s okay to take things apart, you’re not going to get some cosmic slap in the head.

It’s okay to take things apart because truly that’s how life is. I’m looking at this tree

here in front of me, I’m looking at the road over there, they have nothing to do with

each other. And the **** is still up there, and the 20 mile an hour sign, nothing.

Doesn’t have anything to do with the house over there. When you get separate the

pieces of your business into separate pieces, individual pieces, then you’re able to

work on them in a practical, quick way, and you go like a conveyor belt through all

the processes of your day, making each one of them perfect. And hopefully getting

some documentation down so other people can do them.

But you got to write them down first. You got to find out what you do, see the

separate systems, and then work on the system. That’s what the name of the book

is, Work The System. The simple mechanic of making more and working less,

because it is all mechanics.

I’m not an emotional guy, as you can tell, when it comes to this. I’m a mechanic.

I’m a pilot. I’m an engineer. I’m a surveyor. I’m a code writer. These are

mechanical things and this is the aspect of business that I’m really good at. I’m a

little bit of a savant when it comes to identifying—I can walk in a business and tell



you right now how they’re doing. I can tell you within 30 seconds walking in the

front door what the problems are, and I’ll usually be right. I’m really good at that.

I don’t get into the emotional part. I’ll leave that to Wayne Dyer and all the rest of

those guys out there, there’s plenty of room for that, it’s all legitimate, but this is

about mechanics.

And here’s something, Bart, and this is in the preface to the third edition, and my

wife brought it up and I put it in there. Always in the audience when I’m speaking to

a group, there are a few people crossing their arms and shaking their heads and

giving me their dirty eye and looking over at their friend and saying, “This guy’s just

another one of those middle-aged, insensitive, out-of-touch-with-his-feelings kind of

a guy.” And so I always say this, and I said it in the preface of the third edition.

What I say to these groups is, “Look, I understand you think the spiritual is more

important than the mechanical and you’re trying to spend all this time in the spiritual

part of your life, trying to find the area, you’re trying to expand your consciousness,

and trying to—that’s great. But unfortunately, you live in a mechanical world. And

until you get the mechanics of your world straightened out, and I’m talking about

making enough money, taking care of the kids, keeping the spouse happy, until you

get the mechanics under control, the mechanical world won’t allow you to go to the

spiritual place.” So try doing some meditation after a 60-hour work week. It’s not

easy to do.

So I profess that get your mechanics straightened out, get all the money you need,

get all the time you need, and then go where you want to go. Climb mountains, ride

your bike, meditate, go to yoga, get a message. But you can’t loosen up and get

spiritual because you live in a mechanical world—you can’t get that mechanical world

straightened out, you’re not going to get into any kind of a spiritual place. Get the

mechanics fixed first. That’s my gig, Bart.

Bart: Well, I think that strikes well to the mechanic thinkers, but for the really super

creative, the ones that feel very artsy, like your copywriter friend, it doesn’t feel like

something fun to initiate, but it feels like something that could be necessary. And

that’s when you get some outside help. Like I said, I don’t love to sit and write

systems or procedures, but I’ve realized how beneficial they are, I hired somebody

who had a little bit of experience writing, and we got an entire procedure manual

written.

And I’ll tell you how that turned out. One of my employees that I had for almost ten

years that worked customer service virtually from her house, she, you know, she



retired eventually. And I was able to hand somebody a procedure manual and say,

“Here’s how you answer every email. Here’s how you do every system in the

business.” And so what was a, you know, a fairly full-time job is down to maybe four

to six hours a week. So you look at the savings alone, compared to paying someone

20 to 40 hours to 4 to 6 hours, all because I took your advice and wrote every

system down. Now, some of those systems were deleted, so to speak, as we

upgraded our systems. But it’s so easy if you say, “Look, here is a piece of a paper.”

So, we’ve got about five minutes left and we’re going to wrap it up. And I want to

remind you that you can grab a copy of his book, Sam’s book, absolutely free, it’s a

gift to our coaches at 100 Coaching Tips, it’s 100CoachingTips.com/Sam, S-a-m.

Right there, you can opt-in and then learn more about what Sam’s doing.

Sam, you also have an academy for those that want to go farther besides the book.

Can you give me like a two-minute version of what the Work The System Academy

is?

Sam Carpenter: Yeah, we spent a year and a half putting this together, my

collaborator, Mike Giles and I, and my wife, Linda, did all the graphics. But it’s an

online training program, 20 sessions, some of them are 22 minutes long, some of

them are 65 minutes long. It walks you right through the whole process, bam, bam,

bam, from getting it on up to how to put work and procedures together and so forth.

It really is good.

And if somebody follows this, in 60 to 90 days, they will have a new life, with the

typical small business. And, you know, maybe half hour to an hour a day over 60 to

90 days, will do the trick. And so that’s what the Academy is, it’s an expanded

version of the book, but with me talking and Mike talking and some kind of fun

graphics and illustrated stuff. Kind of along the, a lot of little details and a lot of little

stories like we’re talking about today, get you through it, to drive the point home.

But it’s kind of a super book, is what it is, it’s the book expanded to really

encompass all aspects of the process of transforming your organization from chaos

to control.

Bart: And again, 100CoachingTips.com/Sam, the book, all that stuff is right there,

and then it links to the other information to work more with Sam.

Here’s my final question, you got coaches on the phone call, some are executive

coaches, some are life coaches, some are law of attraction coaches, some are

speakers with the small business coaching. One of our upcoming takes people to



Tibet and South Africa on retreats, you know, so she’s a high-end coach with small,

little groups.

What is the first step? I think from what I’ve heard from you, my interpretation is,

get the book, read the book, which of course is easy, because we provide it for free.

Secondly, start writing one system. Would you think that’s the first two steps, or is

there something more for the individual to implement what we’ve learned here

tonight?

Sam Carpenter: Those are perfect steps, but I’ll put one in front of both of them.

And that is when our listeners hang up the phone, physically put the phone down or

turn off their headset, stop, look around the space you’re in, a room for instance,

and identify all the separate systems in that room. And understand that they are

separate from each other. You’re not just in a room or in an office. You are in a

place that is full of separate systems. You have to see the separate systems before

this takes hold, and that is an enlightenment that usually comes in a flash of insight.

And when that happens, when that flash comes, it’s almost religious awakening, you

never go back.

And then you want to put the processes together, you’ll want to isolate the systems,

you’ll want to find out which is the biggest, problematic, fire killing routine that

you’re doing and you want to go through, because now you’re down in the

machinery, down in the basement, making that machinery, create the results that

you get up on the first floor. And you never leave. You’re always in the systems,

once this little mini enlightenment takes hold.

So that’s the first step. See the separate systems in your life wherever you are.

Driving down the road, whatever you’re doing. It’s all the same. Reality works the

same way everywhere all the time. And this idea of separate systems applies to

everything all the time. That’s the first step.

Bart: Well, I got to tell you, the first time when somebody asks you, like a new

employee asks you, how do you do something, and you simply point to a piece of

paper and say, “It’s right here.” And you never see them again, it gets handled and

they never ask that question again, you realize that you just bought yourself hours

and hours and hours because you no longer need to be there to handle these little

details. I mean, it is a sense of freedom that I read about for years, Sam, but I

didn’t actually experience until I took the time to implement the ideas in your book,

go through the difficult process, and sometimes painful, of isolating the various

different systems. And I’m a turbo-entrepreneur, I have different businesses, you



know, 100 Coaching Tips is only one of four or five different businesses that I am

involved in, and each has dozens of systems within them.

And so, you know, for me, it was a real revelation and I can’t say it was overnight,

but it did buy me freedom to, in this case, you know, create even more businesses

and more opportunities for myself.

Sam Carpenter: Yeah. I’ll throw one more in on top of that, Bart, and that is, it

used to take us three months to train the TSR, telephone service representative, to

answer the incoming calls. We had 300 accounts at that time. By osmosis over

three months, they’d sit there with an experienced person, learning the accounts,

learning what keys to press, and of course, many times they didn’t make it, they’d

quit and we’d have to start all over again. You know what it takes us now that we’ve

created a training process? That person—oh, and by the way, after three months,

they’re not very good on the phone until about a year, they’re making all kinds of

mistakes.

Now it takes us a day and a half to train somebody, they’re on the phones at 80%

capacity, a day and a half.

Bart: A day and a half?

Sam Carpenter: A day and a half, yeah. We send them into a room and we say,

“Study this stuff, this online stuff, and this written stuff, and you come out and

spend a half a day with the manager,” and they’re on their way and you never talk to

them again, because it’s all right there. It’s that dramatic.

And so those are the kind of things that make you want to spend your time in the

systems writing up these procedures. Yeah, they’re boring, it’s boring but true,

writing up procedures and giving people written instructions is a very, very effective

thing to do. You’ll never be the same once you start seeing results.

Bart: That’s just amazing. So again, our time is coming to an end. If you want to

grab Sam’s books at 100CoachingTips.com/Sam. I’ll also remind you that at 100

Coaching Tips you can get a full written transcript of this recording. There’s a button

called Upgrade to Audio CD’s, a gold and platinum program, you can download all

the mp3’s on your own schedule, you can get the transcripts, all that with the simple

upgrade button.



All the interviews are free and this interview, including the other ones, do have a 24-

hour replay, so if you want to send someone to this replay, if there’s somebody in

your company that you want to listen to, send them right here, absolutely free for

the next 24 hours. And if you don’t have that time and you want to listen to it later,

just click the Upgrade to CD’s.

Also, to remind you that this week we have more interviews coming, later this week,

the Interviews tab at 100CoachingTips.com/Interviews has all the interviews coming

up during this month, as well as this week, tomorrow, and the past interviews that

you’ve missed, which of course those replays and transcripts are available.

Sam, you’ve been amazing guest as usual, 100CoachingTips.com/Sam. I hope

everyone really does do what you told them to do. Go get the book, listen to the

book, and then implement the system and look around and realize a world of

systems. And I think you’re right, their life really will never be the same.

Sam Carpenter: Thank you, Bart. You’re a great host.

Bart: Well, thank you very much for your time. Everybody, this has been 100

Coaching Tips, tonight my guest has been Sam Carpenter. Please download his book

and join me tomorrow, or the next day, for another fascinating interview with the

world’s leading coaches and business strategists.

Good night everybody.

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