Episode 163 – Brandon Turner

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Automated Transcription

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Brandon Turner  0:00  

When I’m talking to clients or talking to potential clients, I don’t talk about the nuts and bolts I don’t talk about this is the structure we’re going to make, I don’t talk much about, hey, we’re going to set up this process and this, I talk to them about outcomes. The outcome will be, you can take a vacation for a couple of weeks and your business will have grown in your absence. The outcome will be your administrative assistant will know exactly what’s going on with your customer service reps and vice versa. And they can communicate freely, your outcome will be, hey, you’re about to have 10 more hours freed up in your week, because you don’t have to do all these things anymore. And that’s something that was another thing that I had to learn in the process is like if I can talk to them about the outcome, and help them focus on the result, getting there as getting there. That’s where our structure can come in. But I want their mind on the outcome I want their mind on the results.

 

Richard Matthews  0:56  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  1:51  

Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I am live on the line with Brandon Turner. Brandon, are you there?

 

Brandon Turner  1:58  

Yes, I am.

 

Richard Matthews  2:00  

Awesome. So glad to have you here. Brandon. I know you’re calling in from Oklahoma, which is cool. We’ve been there on our travels. For those who’ve been following on with our podcast, my wife and I’s travels. We are currently up in Maine, at the very top of the country in Acadia, which means we’ve officially made it to all four corners of the US, which is fun. So, Brandon, how’s the weather out there in Oklahoma, did it started to warm up yet because it’s just barely starting to warm up here in Maine.

 

Brandon Turner  2:25  

It actually had started to warm up probably a few weeks ago. It’s like winter was still trying to make a stand. But spring actually kind of took over. So we’ve got partly cloudy skies right now. It’s warm out 60 to 70 degrees, so it’s good.

 

Richard Matthews  2:45  

Our last couple of drives, I think it’s the cottonwoods they have all the little white pulps that fly off of them. And it’s like you’re driving through clouds of pollen and other things. And our red car was green the other day because it was just covered in pollen. So yeah, we’re at that point in life, which is, I love spring I love summer, I’m really looking forward to this summer being actually outdoors a little bit more than last summer with our pandemic. So hopefully, we’ll get to do a little bit more. 

 

Brandon Turner  3:12  

Absolutely. 

 

Richard Matthews  3:13  

So what I want to do real quick, Brandon is introduce you to our audience who may not know who you are, and then we’ll get to start talking about your story. So, Brandon, is an IT guy turned entrepreneur and you own getsops.com where you make digital procedure manuals for business, which is a little bit of a heartthrob of mine, secretly. And you set up systems in your business, and you hired a small team to run them and it freed you up to start your newsletter in August 2020, called Recipes for Business, we talked about building a business that could run without you whenever you need it to and the content for recipes for business is based on what you learn from getsops from clients over the years. So with that sort of brief introduction, why don’t you start off and tell me what you’re known for? What’s your business now? Who do you serve? What do you do for him?

 

Brandon Turner  4:04  

Yes, so I am known for helping people basically duplicate themselves. And I’m going to touch on that more when we get into the superpower part. But I help people delegate, automate, outsource and scale what they do in their business. So that they can be their most productive selves, be productive instead of busy, free up extra hours and their week, and generally be able to have a higher quality of life because they have more time to do the things that make them happy, fulfilled or more productive. So it’s entrepreneurs. Typically business owners, but also business managers. Even if you have a team, a rockstar team member or two, we help them delegate what they need to do help them learn how to maybe outsource or automate something that they do so they can stop wearing so many hats and stop spinning so many plates, and it gives you an opportunity to keep your team members on the same page. There are numerous benefits that come out of it. But that’s what we’re known for is helping people delegate, automate, outsource, and scale.

 

Richard Matthews  5:12  

Yeah, that’s incredible. And I know it’s one of the things that I always talk to my clients about is you need to learn how to create systems, and then how to document those systems in scalable, powerful ways because it’s what makes the difference between being if you’re familiar with any of the Rich Dad Poor Dad stuff, being an S type, business owner, to B type business owner is having those systems and having them all documented.

 

Brandon Turner  5:37  

Absolutely, yes, that’s actually part of my story. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a book is actually what gave me the epiphany, I guess I should call it that let me know that there’s more than one way to move forward in life. So it was really eye-opening.

 

Richard Matthews  5:59  

Yeah, same for me. I was like, nine or 10, when my dad gave me that book, changed my whole outlook on the world. And you ever see those Facebook posts were like, if you were doing your childhood dream job, what would you be doing? And it’s like, I’m doing it. Because as a kid, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So that’s we’re at. And I’m pretty excited to get in and talk about your methodology for systems and processes. Because it’s super cool. But before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about how you got to be an entrepreneur. We talk on this show all the time about your origin story, every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today, were you born a hero? Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into outsourcing and teaching people how to build processes? Or did you start a job and eventually become an entrepreneur? Basically, where did you come from? How’d you get here?

 

Brandon Turner  6:55  

So I am actually an only child. I was born and raised in Georgia, as an only child, raised by my mother, my mother and father got divorced when I was eight years old, my father was an IT, and my mother owned her own business. And her business was a travel agency. Now, this was before the internet. So this is actually when you walked into the office to book your flights to book your travel, you would go into her office and you would meet with her. And at the time, mom had become a single mom, she would bring me to work with her many times and I would just sit in her sitting area, her lobby area, and I would sit on the floor and I would play with my ninja turtle toys. I had this ninja turtle blimp. Speaking to superheroes. 

 

Richard Matthews  6:59  

Did you have the pizza shooter? 

 

Brandon Turner  7:46  

Yes, I did. I think that my favorite shooter. 

 

Richard Matthews  7:49  

Love the pizza shooter. 

 

Brandon Turner  7:51  

Oh my gosh, it was just classic. And I just love playing with the action figures. And my favorite piece was the turtle blimp. For those who might remember that the Ninja Turtles flew around in a blimp. It really cool. So I had my turtle blimp on the floor, while mom is over on the other side of the room working with clients. And this was my first taste of what small businesses like from the owner’s perspective.

 

Brandon Turner  8:16  

Because, we patronize businesses, obviously when I was growing up, you go out to eat or you go shop for your clothes, or whatever. But this was my first opportunity to see what was happening on the other side of the transaction. But I didn’t really understand what I was seeing at the time, so what happened when the internet came around is that basically wiped out mom’s business, because it just made it inefficient. And nobody was walking into an office to book their travel anymore. So mom had to shut down her travel business. And she ended up getting a regular job again. Fortunately, she had a background in sales. So most of her jobs were sales jobs in various industries. And she was able to take the sales skills that she developed when she had her business she was able to take into sales jobs. So she always did well financially. But she always wanted to get her business back going. Meanwhile, dad was an IT. So I didn’t really understand how to do what mom was doing with both of these influences in my life. Her with, with dad being an IT and mom being a business owner. I didn’t know how to do what mom was doing. So I went into IT myself. Now while I was in IT, I was studying entrepreneurship because I get I was bitten by that bug. Obviously at an early age. I studied entrepreneurship. I tried to study other successful people like mom, people who why did they start a business? What’s it like to run a business? What does it mean? How do you serve people in that capacity? So Meanwhile, I went to college to do IT because that was a safe secure thing. I chose it because obviously, it was a popular growing industry, and I knew that I’d always have a safe and secure job in IT. But there’s always that part of me that wanted to be an entrepreneur and start a business and pursue that type of freedom, make your own hours and decide and choose who you’re going to serve all of these things. So as I was studying that, and I was doing it, I made the decision when I was in college that I was going to move to Oklahoma. And the reason that I moved to Oklahoma, from Georgia was because this is where my wife is from. I actually met her online back when meeting people online was different.

 

Richard Matthews  10:37  

It wasn’t cool yet. 

 

Brandon Turner  10:39  

It wasn’t cool yet. That’s exactly right. My wife and I had a chance to build our relationship on communication, a foundation of communication, because I was five states away, we met online and we get on the phone back when people would talk on the phone for hours. And that’s what we do. So as an only child, I made the decision to move out here to Oklahoma. And it was easier for me to uproot. And do that. So I came here, but I didn’t know anyone. When I came here. I knew her family members and some of her friends. But I didn’t know anyone. So I got an IT job here. But I still wanted to be an entrepreneur, I still wanted to do that. Like how do I get closer to that? Up to that point, I had been reading books, biographies of entrepreneurs, going to the public library, and checking out books and things like this. But I’d like to actually sit in a room with them and connect with them. So through the power of the internet, I found a website called meetup.com. For those who are not familiar, it’s a place where you can get together with like minds. And it was about that time that I was reading, years before I had started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Rich Dad, Poor Dad is what helped me go from, I don’t think I can do what mom does too, I want to know how to do what mom did. I want to know how to be an entrepreneur because that’s possible for me, I can make my own hours, I don’t have to be in the nine to five grind. I don’t have to work 40 years of my life to retire on 40% of my income. I don’t have to worry about those things, I could actually choose my destiny and have financial freedom and have freedom of time. So armed with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and then getting on this website, this meetup.com I found a group of entrepreneurs that meet here locally. And I decided to just go, I’d never met these people before they were all strangers to me. But what we had in common was that they were doing what I wanted to do. So I walked into this room and it was a coffee shop Actually, I walked up to the table and I said, Hey, I’m Brandon and they welcomed me with open arms had me sit down and introduce myself, hey, I’m Brandon, I am interested in entrepreneurship, I want to learn what I want to learn and, and go from there. And then I just became part of this community all of a sudden, this community of like minds. So now I had peers, and I had guidance about how to get where I wanted to go. And they were filling in the gaps that mom couldn’t fill in for me, years prior. And I started understanding, piecing together what mom did with those books that I read. And now I’m in the room, rubbing elbows with people who were doing what I wanted to do. So I was still doing it as my full-time job. But Rich Dad, Poor Dad inspired me to start a side business. And so I worked full time and ran my side business on nights and weekends. Well, one night, I realized I’d started a pattern. And it’s the same pattern that a lot of us start when we get into our businesses. Now most of us, including me, don’t see this pattern until it’s too late. Or we’re trapped inside of it with seemingly no way out. And that pattern was doing everything myself. So in my business, I was the sales guy. I was the IT guy. I was the accountant. I was the customer service rep. I was the legal counsel. I was all of these different things. I wasn’t just doing what I was good at. I was also having to put on all these extra hats. And nobody prepared me for that when I got into the business. And I didn’t realize I was wearing too many hats until I realized what little time I had left in my day. And since I have the same 24 hours in a day as everybody else, something had to change. But sacrificing more sleep than I was already sacrificing was no longer an option. So Meanwhile, at my full-time IT job, we had this checklist to track our daily procedures. So I would complete a task. Someone would review my task and put their initials on the checklist. Someone else would complete a task I’d review their task and put my initials on the checklist. A few weeks later, it hit me that I need a checklist in my business. Because that way, if I ever want to hire help, they’ll know exactly what to do, the way that I do it, and the results will be just the same. It’s kind of like a recipe. So I wrote one of my daily activities, wrote one of my processes on a sheet of paper, step one, step two, step three. And then through the magic of the Internet and Facebook, I hired somebody on Facebook, and I sent them that sheet of paper. So a week passes, and hours have freed uptime. So a week later, basically, hours have freed up time later, and $50 later to pay this person, that task completed pretty much to perfection, without me having to lay a hand on it. So not only had I just created a job for somebody, but I got my time back in the process. So weeks into this, I’m thinking, What if I do this for other businesses. So I started writing operating procedures for other businesses and helping them manage their workflow. And for those not familiar, there are some people that aren’t familiar with the term operating procedure. It’s a fancy term for a recipe, basically, a recipe has ingredients, amounts, and instructions. Well, the same thing is true of what happens in your business. You have ingredients, amounts, and instructions. So I started writing people’s recipes for their businesses. And eventually, I turned that into a business called getsops.com. I created my own systems and then hired a small team to run the operation in my place, which eventually freed up my time to start the recipes for a business newsletter, in August of 2020. Where I teach people to do what I did. And that’s how I got here.

 

Richard Matthews  16:58  

That’s awesome. And I have a similar story with hiring my first employee, whose name is Mark, he’s wonderful. And he’ll be listening to this, which is why I mentioned him because he does the post-production or helps with post-production on these podcasts. But I was in a mastermind, this couple of years back now. And one of the other entrepreneurs who is there, after we get up and share it, all of our staff and our procedures and everything we were doing for the last year and what our plans were this next year, he pulls me aside and says, You, You’re your own bottleneck in your business. If you want to grow the thing you need to do next you need to hire someone. And he’s like and take these processes that you’ve been building for yourself and give them to your team members. Then I was like, I remember thinking at that time because I haven’t hired anyone yet that I couldn’t do that because I didn’t have the money to do it. I was like, I don’t have the revenue to afford someone. And he was like you don’t understand. You need to hire someone. He’s like, I know you don’t get it yet. Just trust me to do it, hire someone to hand off these things. And I remember vacillating over it for two months. And I was like, I just can’t do it. I can’t afford it. Finally, I bit the bullet and I hired someone full-time. I think I hired him part-time for the first month. And then what happened was all of the stuff that needed to get done, got done, and I had more time and like you realized, suddenly, not only did he pay for himself, but it freed up our time, we actually made more money than it costs to hire them. And it was like a lightbulb moment for me. I was like oh my goodness. Because we got more done in the same amount of time. Because now instead of my 40 hours a week, we had 80 hours of the week going towards the same tasks and outputs, we got a lot more done and were able to generate more revenue and pay for ourselves. So it was like this lightbulb moment that hey, if I have other people, and I have recipes, and you put those together, you have a B quadrant business to put it in Rich Dad terms.

 

Brandon Turner  19:01  

Yes, it is. That’s well stated. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, it’s such an eye-opener, as you saw and as you felt, it’s just amazing.

 

Richard Matthews  19:10  

Yeah, it definitely changed your business. And now my organization still small we got I think for people between myself and our staff, but anyways, it’s allowed us to grow a lot because of what we do, and having those systems in place. So if you’re listening to this, and you haven’t got to the point where you’re starting to get your own SOP’s written and put in place and then actually implementing them. It’s a huge benefit. So I do want to talk a little bit about your superpowers, which I think will probably tie directly into getting these things written and whatnot. Every iconic hero has a superpower. Whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by genius intellect or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky, and super strength or whatever it is. In the real world. heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with or developed over time that really energizes all of your other skills. So it’s what sets you apart and what allows you to help your clients come out on top in their journey. And the way I like to frame it for my guests is if you look at all the things that you’ve gotten good at over the years, all the skills that you’ve acquired, there’s probably a common thread that sort of ties them all together. And that common thread is where you find your superpower. So with that sort of framing, what do you think your superpower is in your business?

 

Brandon Turner  20:28  

In general, I would say it’s the ability to duplicate people. So I can give an example. My very first client was a construction company out of New Jersey. And they sent me a video of their contractors working in the field. And they asked me, Hey, can you write operating procedures or recipes off of a video. And I said I see why not. So I put on a headset, and I watched their video, and listen to their video. And I had this template that I use to write people’s recipes. And I was typing up the recipe as I was watching it. So a contractor would do something, they’d lay down a plank, or whatever it is, and I type up that part of their process. And then the next thing they do is maybe they would nail the plank down. And then I typed that into part of the process. That gave me the ability to see action, what the actual recipe was, I got to watch them put the ingredients together and mix them together and things like this. I was writing recipes for people. But I didn’t really have a process for that. It was kind of just every client was different. And it wasn’t quite as organized. But what this gave me, since I could take a recording of what they’re doing, I didn’t have to have them explain the process to me, I didn’t have to have them re-explain it to me, I didn’t have to interview anybody. I didn’t have to shout out their team members, I was able to watch this video. If I had a question, I press rewind on the video. And that video gave me all that I needed to actually document what they did write their recipe, write their procedure. And this gave me the ability to duplicate them almost seamlessly. And this became my recipe for writing recipes if you will. So that gave me the ability to say, Okay, here’s exactly what this person does. Here’s how they do it. Here’s the order that they do it in. And now you’ve got this written in that case, this written recipe that you can hand to anybody. Okay, good. So Person A does this in this order. Here’s all of it written down. You take this, and now you can go do the same thing. And it occurred to me, I was able to duplicate that person, I was able to duplicate that contractor, by telling somebody else exactly what’s in that contractor’s head. Exactly what that contractor’s habit is, and how they do things, and in what order. And once I realized that I was like, Oh, my gosh, I can do this for other clients too the same way. I’m serving your unique needs as a client. But I can do it in the same way as I do for other clients if that makes any sense. And that’s why I like to say I was able to create a procedure for writing procedures or create a recipe for writing recipes. And that’s where the basis of everything I’ve been able to do in my business, and for other clients, businesses, and for subscribers to my newsletter, that’s been the basis of all of these different things, it’s like, we’re able to duplicate the head chef, so the sous chefs can put out just as good a dish as the head chef can, it’s kind of like that. And that’s when things really clicked for me. And that’s where it came together that, that’s the common thread. Like, it doesn’t matter how different your industry is, how different your businesses from business A or B, I can duplicate you, or I can help you duplicate yourself if you will, or your managers or any of your team members like it became this system that created more systems and it became this beautiful machine.

 

Richard Matthews  24:27  

Yeah, I can tell we’re gonna nerd out together at some point because I’ve got a whole Trello board process that goes from beginning to end that we use to document processes. So we can take recorded videos and take them through transcription and step writing and screenshots and all the way through to quality review and published into an SOP library for ourselves and for our clients and whatnot. And yeah, so it’s a whole system, its whole process for creating processes. And I think it’s a genius thing to have in your business, but to also know someone who knows how to do it is a huge, huge asset. And anyway it’s powerful when you realize that most of the things in your business if you can get them systematized and you can get them documented, then you can put people in those places, which allows you to do a number of things, it allows you to scale, you can actually spend money on advertising and grow without worrying about your business exploding, so you can put people into new positions and spin them up quickly. Because you’ve got the training already done. And it allows you to do a lot of things when you have that stuff in place. So anyway, it’s definitely a cool superpower to have. And I was trying to think of one of the Marvel characters that replicate themselves and I couldn’t off the top of my head. Think of any of them but anyway, I’ve got the picture in my head, but I can’t remember their name. My kids are playing Kirby the other day, and Meta Knight does that, like the bad guy Kirby, when they’re doing the boss battle with them. Like he replicates himself into like five or six different Kirby’s or different Mata Knights. And you have to figure out which one’s the real one. It’s a superpower. That’s the Nemesis power. But anyways, cool kind of thing.

 

Brandon Turner  26:21  

Yeah, I saw Dr. Strange do it one time. And that was with the aid of an Infinity Stone, but I saw him do that one time. So yeah, I get what you mean.

 

Richard Matthews  26:31  

So I want to talk about the flip side of your superpower, which is your fatal flaw. And just like every Superman has his kryptonite, or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, something you struggled with, for me, it was a couple of things. It was perfectionism, that kept me from actually shipping products and actually bringing things to the market. Or another one for me was early in my entrepreneur career was lack of self-care, which sort of came out and not having good boundaries with my clients, and letting them walk all over me, stuff like that. But I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it. So people who are listening might learn a little bit from your experience,

 

Brandon Turner  27:16  

I spent most of my life being a dreamer instead of a Doer. And it has its benefits when you’re a kid, and you’re growing up. And a lot of us or our peers had the story of I want to be a firefighter, when I grow up, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up, I want to be a rock star when I grow up. And mine was I want to be an entrepreneur when I grow up. And I think, a lot of what’s rooted in was procrastination. Once I learned what I wanted to do, I think I had that too where I was a perfectionist, I tried to plan it out and map it out. Because doing what we do, we’re process thinkers, we think in terms of systems, and we think in terms of processes, that’s how our eyes see the world. And for me, I was trying to plan out, if I’m going to take an action, I would plan it out before I take it, what’s the outcome going to be? If it doesn’t work right? What’s going to happen here? How do I prepare for that? I’d be thinking about all of those things. And I had these visionary thoughts on a lot of occasions, but I never acted on them, or I never saw them through. Or better yet, I never took the first step. And I think that procrastination cost me years of what would otherwise have been a success. I could have gotten a lot of the trials and tribulations that I’ve been through as an entrepreneur, I could have gone through them sooner, gotten past them sooner, I could have failed faster, learn from those failures faster, and therefore succeeded sooner and been further along. But I didn’t, what it took for me to overcome that was as hard as it is for somebody like me to do what it took for me to overcome that was to think less, process less, take more action, and then I can sort it out later. I remember a term that a mentor told me about called minimum viable product. You have just given an example. You’re a perfectionist so that kept you from bringing products to market and actually getting out there, that’s what that reminds me of, if you have an idea for something, put it out there, test it, talk to people about it, create a draft of it and show it to people. It doesn’t have to be perfect and bulletproof before you put it out there. It becomes perfect and bulletproof as it’s out there. And as it takes some hits and as it gets a chance to touch the market. People can give you feedback. And that feedback is how you can make it bulletproof and all of these amazing things. And the sooner that I learned that the sooner that I started advancing, I guess I should say, which was a hard thing to do because I was wired to dream. Instead of doing, I was wired. Well, let me back up, I was wired to dream more than do. And when I started flipping that, and I started taking action instead, in spite of fear, in spite of self-doubt, just go do it. And you can clean it up later. That’s exactly what happened with the recipes for the business newsletter, when I started it last year, it was rough, I didn’t really have an identity behind it, I had to develop that as I went along. And thank goodness, I had subscribers that were with me early enough to be patient with me. But it was the same thing with getsops.com, there was no blueprint for that, nobody had already done it before. So I kind of just had to put it out there and sharpen it as I went. And that was the best lesson for me Don’t wait. If you’re a perfectionist, that perfection will come. But you need to take the first step. Don’t try to seize the perfection. First, it will come after you’ve taken the necessary steps. So that would be it.

 

Richard Matthews  31:24  

I call that learning to be a parachute builder. And what I mean by that is jump off the cliff and learn to build a parachute on the way down. 

 

Brandon Turner  31:33  

Yes. 

 

Richard Matthews  31:35  

Right? cuz that’s the way we look at a lot of our decisions as a business it’s a risk, we’re jumping off the cliff. And as entrepreneurs, we have to get really good at that whole parachute building experience, building whatever it is that we’re doing so that our stuff survives and doesn’t crash into the ground and burn. And what’s interesting is, I think one of the things you’re talking about like the minimum viable product is I think, at least for us perfectionists, we get caught up in the idea that our product is an automobile and not as a software program. And like the automakers, people’s lives are at risk. And if they don’t have the steering right, and they don’t have the onboard computer, right, and they don’t have all the things right, people die. Chances are, though, that’s not your product, it’s not your service. If you don’t do it, a 100% accurate, the first time that you bring it out, people aren’t going to die from it. And so you see that all the time in the software world, where Apple released their latest iOS update and version, what was it? Version 15 just came out. And within two weeks, they released version 13.1 with a bunch of bug fixes. Because once they got it in front of a bunch of people, they’re like, Oh, this doesn’t work right? Fix that, this doesn’t work right, fix that, that kind of thing. The overwhelming majority of our products and services fall into that category. And you can iterate and improve as you’re going on. Anf if you’re in a space where you’re dealing with people’s lives, absolutely feel free to be a perfectionist, we appreciate it. But to your point, I think most of the time, your products never going to be ready for market, there is only bringing it to market and finding out what can be improved and what can be iterated upon.

 

Brandon Turner  33:23  

Yes, absolutely. Agreed. Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  33:28  

So I want to talk a little bit about your actual business and the people that you serve. We call this your common enemy, right. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, it’s the thing that you’re constantly fighting against in your world. So in the world of business, it takes on a lot of forms. But generally speaking, we put it in the context of your clients, so the people that are hiring you to build your SOP’s, and it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw, that you’re constantly having to fight to overcome so that you can actually get them the result that they hired you for. So what do you think your arch-nemesis is the thing that you constantly have to fight against in your world?

 

Brandon Turner  34:06  

Oh, wow. I don’t know that there’s one word for it. But I would say uniqueness. No two clients are the same. Even if they’re in the same industry, I will say that, that if they are in the same industry, my team and I have enough experience writing people’s recipes that we know commonalities in an industry. We know if client A and client B are in the same industry, they’re going to be things about them that are alike. And it’s the things about them that are different that we need to worry about. When we’re talking about across industries, various industries and I say this because we serve clients in the digital marketing space in construction and finance and Real Estate. And so I think this recipe for writing recipes that I created, how can I make sure that we serve all of these clients with the same level of service while embracing their differences? How can we help them yield the same result, which is duplicating themselves and their people while embracing their specific needs, because when I think about the ultimate goal, in order to get us to the ultimate goal, we can’t reinvent what we do for each client. Because then you just don’t have the system and you don’t have the capacity for that. Because, you know, one week you’re working more hours than the other or one client may require more resources and more commitment than the other. And everything in it could be different, entirely different than next week. So I would say the main thing, the main enemy is uniqueness and diversity among clients, if that makes sense.

 

Richard Matthews  36:13  

Yeah, it reminds me of a thing that I tell all of my clients, we do a lot of work in the web development space. Because we talked about building heroic brands. And one of the things that go into building her brand is having the website for your brand. And I have a template we use, and the template has the same bits like there’s always going to be a homepage, there’s always going to be an about page, there’s always going to be a blog, and there’s always going to be a certain set of things that you cover. And the analogy I always give my clients, it’s like a house, every house you go into has a front door. And they all have walls, and they all have windows, and they all have rooms and a kitchen and bathrooms and a garage. So all that stuff is in every house. And so you have that skeleton of a process, you have that skeleton of a thing that you do. And what you come in on top of it is that’s where you bring the uniqueness. And on top, you come in and you do your furniture selections and your paint and your art and your life comes in and makes the house into a home. That’s the analogy I always give to people it’s like, Hey, your website is gonna start off looking like everything else. Because you have to have the same framework, right? You’re going to have navigation, you’re going to have a home page and about page, it’s all going to be there. But we’re going to come in on top of it. And we’re going to put your style onto it. You’re going to put your copy and your products and services and your fonts and photography. And that’s what makes it yours. Yeah, but the structure is always the same. So anyway,  it’s an interesting thing to both deal with, from having clients hire you, like teaching them and making sure they understand it, but then also like implementing that in reality is making sure that, you actually are getting that uniqueness on top of the skeleton because the skeleton is there.

 

Brandon Turner  38:02  

Yes, absolutely. Well said. Yes.

 

Richard Matthews  38:07  

It’s an interesting thing because the problem is not a lot of people are capable of seeing potential. Right. Seeing what something could be they see what it is now. And so when you’re talking about something that has a formula, they see the basics, they see the structure, they don’t see what it’s going to be in the future. So it’s really hard to help your clients sort of see where you’re taking them, even though you’re following a formulaic process. I don’t know if that makes sense.

 

Brandon Turner  38:40  

No, it absolutely makes sense. And that’s the reason behind when I’m talking to clients or talking to potential clients, I don’t talk about the nuts and bolts I don’t talk about this is the structure we’re going to make, I don’t talk much about, hey, we’re going to set up this process and this. I talked to them about outcomes. The outcome will be, you can take a vacation for a couple of weeks and your business will have grown in your absence. The outcome will be your administrative assistant will know exactly what’s going on with your customer service reps and vice versa. And they can communicate freely, your outcome will be, hey, you’re about to have 10 more hours freed up in your week, because you don’t have to do all these things anymore. And that’s another thing that I had to learn in the process is if I can talk to them about the outcome, and help them focus on the result getting there is getting there. That’s where our structure can come in. But I want their mind on the outcome. I want their mind on the results.

 

Richard Matthews  39:42  

Yeah, I always was talking about living life in the promised land. You have to sell life in the promised land, even though they got across the crocodile-infested river to get there. You want to talk about that. You want to talk about life in the promised land afterward?

 

Brandon Turner  39:57  

Yes, absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  40:01  

So, if your common enemy is the thing you fight against, then your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What do you fight for at Get SOP’s? What’s your mission, so to speak?

 

Brandon Turner  40:19  

To help people build scalable businesses that create jobs, and give them their time back. That’s the mission.

 

Richard Matthews  40:28  

I like it, that’s super simple. And I love the particularly the scalable part, it really makes me happy. Because I know a lot of the businesses that I work with, and people that I run into on a regular basis, the struggle they have with their business is that it takes everything from them. 

 

Brandon Turner  40:51  

Right.

 

Richard Matthews  40:51  

And that thought is the reason we become entrepreneurs, we become entrepreneurs because we have a value we want to give to the world. And we want to have the freedom that goes along with bringing that. And if you don’t learn how to build that scalable portion of your business, you don’t get either of those things, you’re not really scaling the value you can give to the world. And your business is taking everything from you it’s taking your time and is taking your money and that kind of stuff. And I really love just what you’re doing for businesses, you’re helping shape them into value engines, essentially, that can run on their own.

 

Brandon Turner  40:51  

Right, that’s the goal, because that’s what I wanted for myself. And that’s what I saw that mom had, and I was like, we can’t be the only ones who want this. And come to find out. That’s what we all want in entrepreneurship.

 

Richard Matthews  41:41  

Yeah, that’s what we all want, like we have something we want to do to help the world and we want that to help us get compensated well for it. And when you raise both of those at the same time, requires the systems and processes. Which is sort of why I’ve become obsessed with them and why you build a business around it. So it’s very cool. So I want to talk a little bit about how you do some of this stuff. So we call this your heroes tool belt. And it’s the practical portion of our show. And just like every superhero has their tool belt with awesome gadgets like batarangs, or web slingers, or laser eyes, I want to talk about the top one or two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business to do what you do. It could be anything from your notepad, your calendar, your marketing tools, something you use for your actual product delivery, something that you think is essential to getting your job done, and actually building the sop’s you build for your clients.

 

Brandon Turner  42:36  

This is centered around product delivery, actually. So it’s two tools. One is our website. And then the second tool is what we call our online portal. So here’s how this works. First of all, with our website, our website explains who we serve and what we do for them. And it also allows clients to order our service as well. So they can order right there on the website. After they’ve watched my story. And how we started the business. They can see everything that we do, they can see our past work, they can see samples of our work, they can see the sequence in which we do the work. Plus, they can watch a short video, which explains the onboarding process. And this process has actually, excuse me that video, I should say, it’s actually allowed us to teach clients to self onboard, which has worked amazing wonders for the business. So our website is one of those essential tools. The second essential tool is what we call our client portal. It’s this online portal where people can submit any resources or documentation that we need to make their recipes to do their processes for them. They log in to this portal, it’s password protected. And then they submit anything that we need. We log into the portal, pull that information down, and then make their stuff, make their documentation, make their digital checklists, make their digital procedure manuals, and then upload them back into that portal. So now the clients just go back into that portal download at their leisure. And they’re on their way if that makes sense.

 

Richard Matthews  44:19  

Awesome. What do you use for the portal? Like what software?

 

Brandon Turner  44:22  

It’s called Process Street. Process Street, for those unfamiliar, is a workflow management software, it allows you to create digital checklists, we use it inside of getsops.com as well as on behalf of clients if that makes sense.

 

Richard Matthews  44:39  

Yeah, we use Trello for our processes. And we do something really interesting that I found really useful. So maybe this is helpful for you and when you’re building processes. Trello is project management. So you take a task from to do to done inside of Trello and each workflow that you have has several processes. And those processes generally will have the checklists that go along with them. And so the checklist is generally the process you’ve written out. So it’s got the step by step stuff that needs to get done. And what we’ll do is, as a task moves from one place to the next, which is generally whoever’s in charge of accomplishing that thing in Trello, the checklist will pop up. And instead of just having the actual checklist of, step one, do this step two, do this, it’s got the links to the sops for those things. And so what that does is it does a couple of things for people is it allows your project management, to also be your personnel training. So you can take someone brand new, and you can say, here is the task you need to do, and you assign it to them. And the act of assigning to them also trains them how to do it. And because they’re just links, it also gets out of the way, when someone gets familiar with the process. Yeah. So as they as it becomes a second nature process to them, they don’t have to click the links and go and look at it. But if they need to, it’s always there. So it’s been super useful for us building processes. That’s my tip for anyone who’s listening on how to sort of tie those two things together.

 

Brandon Turner  46:20  

Yes. Wonderful tip. And that’s exactly right. That’s one of the beautiful things about Trello. And interestingly enough, process street does the exact same thing. It just looks different. And this is how we’ve been able to train. 

 

Richard Matthews  46:32  

That’s a different software? 

 

Brandon Turner  46:34  

Right, yeah. And the interface looks different and behaves differently. But it accomplishes the same thing, where we’ve been able to train team members along with clients and manage their projects, all of this resource. So it’s really anybody needs that kind of tool in their toolbox if they have a business, just in general. Everybody needs that kind of tool.

 

Richard Matthews  46:55  

Yeah absolutely, and it’s so interesting, too, because if you go back 510 years, project management wasn’t great. And process documentation wasn’t great. And it’s like, you pulled up the three ring binder off of the shelf and open it up and go through stuff to find the processes. Nobody ever used them. But now you can have them dynamically work together. I mean, you do stuff today with your project management and your documentation where they tie together, and they can become so much more efficient. And it’s one of those things that like, I think, personally, that building your recipes and building your processes, the way that you’re describing, or the way that I just talked about gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. And if you don’t actively start doing that now, the companies who are doing that will kick your ass in the future. 

 

Brandon Turner  47:46  

Of course, yeah. 

 

Richard Matthews  47:50  

I think right now, it’s a competitive advantage. But in a couple of years, it’s gonna be one of those things that like, if you’re not doing it, you can’t keep up.

 

Brandon Turner  47:57  

Right, exactly. Yeah. So it’s good to be ahead of that.

 

Richard Matthews  48:02  

Yeah, good to be ahead of that I think you’re in a good spot for what it is you’re offering people that’s really cool. And I was just checking out your website. And it’s all right there on the homepage, they can just check out right there and actually get their processes done. So that’s super, super cool. And I love what you’re doing. 

 

Richard Matthews  48:18  

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Richard Matthews  49:56  

So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your own personal heroes. Every hero has their mentors, just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi-Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, or even spider man had his Uncle Ben. So who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, maybe peers who were a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you have accomplished so far in your business?

 

Brandon Turner  50:20  

It starts with my mother. And that’s because that’s where the entrepreneurial bug bit me. And that was my first exposure to it, at an early age again, when I didn’t really understand what I was seeing and what I was being exposed to. So it started there. It continued with Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki would be the next one. Because that opened my eyes to this is something I could actually do. And I know the mindset that I need to adopt in order to pursue something like this, those would be my top two, I’ve had many other superheroes and mentors along the way. But those two put me in the position where I could sit at the same table with a self-made millionaire, and just have them, talk to me like we’re just, we’re just at the ball game or something just talking to me about business and try this. And I did this and do that. So it just opened the doors for more of those types of relationships, I would say.

 

Richard Matthews  51:22  

Absolutely. And it always surprises me too at how consistent the answers are to that question. Because you’d think that there are wildly different things, but it’s always parents, or teachers, or someone that like if you ask them today, Hey, did you know you were Brandon’s hero? The answer would probably be No, I didn’t know, I was a hero. But The reality is we all have our heroes. And I remember, one of the catalysts for starting this show, was a mentor of mine, who couldn’t even name me wouldn’t even know I exist in the real world. But I remember he was speaking on stage. And one of the things he said was, hey, when you grow up, and you have children, your children are going to have a hero. And if you’re not worthy, it won’t be you. 

 

Brandon Turner  52:17  

Wow. 

 

Richard Matthews  52:17  

And I remember thinking to myself, I need to be the kind of person who’s worthy of being a hero. So one of the things that surprised me about how consistent those answers are on this show is how everyone has people in their lives, that are heroes to them. And their heroes without having sought out the being a hero. They just have that responsibility, so to speak. And so it’s always just a simple reminder for me that, hey, you should always act and act in a way that you’re worthy of the influence you have on someone else’s life.

 

Brandon Turner  52:53  

Right. Yeah, that’s always true. And that’s how it works out or they’re not setting out to be our heroes. It just so happens.

 

Richard Matthews  53:05  

It just so happens, yeah. Super cool. So I want to talk a little bit about your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code, for instance, Bat Man never kills his enemies, he only ever puts them in Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles you use regularly in your life, maybe something you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey,

 

Brandon Turner  53:27  

Oh, man, those are good ones. Okay, I’m going to narrow this down. One of the first ones that I would say it’s actually rooted and everything that I do in business, it’s that my goal is not to get everything done. But to have less to do. Not to get everything done, but to have less to do, 

 

Richard Matthews  53:53  

I like that. 

 

Brandon Turner  53:56  

And then the other one is to dream less and do more. For me, in particular, and I say that out loud for myself in particular, because still to this day, I have to remind myself that the dream will materialize faster if I take the steps toward it. Instead of planning the steps, take the steps. So that’s those are my tools.

 

Richard Matthews  54:25  

I really liked both of those. So dream less, do more. And so the first one was have less to do right?

 

Brandon Turner  54:36  

Don’t try to get everything done, but instead have less to do.

 

Richard Matthews  54:41  

So talk to me a little bit more about that. How does that practically play itself out in your business? Just because I think that’s brilliant.

 

Brandon Turner  54:49  

There was a principle that I learned from a book and this book is called The One Thing it’s written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Gary Keller is the co-founder of Keller Williams Realty. So one of the principles of the one thing forces you to ask this question, what is the one thing I can do? Such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? Now you ask this question in any area of your life, depending on what you’re challenged with, at the moment, this could be in your relationships, this could be in your business, this could be with your finances, this could be with your spiritual life, it could be any number of things. As an example. For me and my business, I would ask, what’s the one thing I can do on my business so that I no longer have to spend weeks shadowing people and have to drive around town to go to their offices and have to pick up a check and drive to the bank, and also have to hold their hand through the onboarding process? What’s the one thing that I can do that will make all of those other things easier or unnecessary? What’s the one thing that I can do in my marriage that will make every other aspect of my relationship with my spouse easier and lighter and better? And take it to a new level? What’s the one thing that I can do to strengthen my relationship with God or the universe? Whatever it is, you believe in? I had to focus on that question. And I had to stop myself in so many cases, and ask myself that question, what is my one thing? Well, what that leads to is you end up clearing some stuff off of your plate that you thought was urgent, that maybe wasn’t you thought was important, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe you can delegate some of that stuff, maybe you can get rid of some of that stuff, depending on what area of life you’re dealing with. And that’s why that became one of my guiding principles. It’s like, I don’t want to get everything done now, I don’t want to have to address all of these different things all at once. And then oh, my gosh, if I drop one of these plates that I’m spinning, let me go put this plate, I don’t have to be scatterbrained, it doesn’t have to be chaos, I can focus on the one thing that will eliminate the need to spin the other plates, or make the plates lighter, or make it so that instead of spinning seven plates, I’m spinning three, or two or something like that. So it really helps you focus on that. It really helps you hone in on the one thing, that’s why they call it the one thing.

 

Richard Matthews  57:32  

It’s one of those asked better questions get better answers kind of thing.

 

Brandon Turner  57:36  

Yes, absolutely. It sure is.

 

Richard Matthews  57:39  

Yeah, so just to repeat for the guys who didn’t hear it, don’t strive to get everything done, strive instead to have less to do. I really like that I wrote that down. I’m gonna stick that up somewhere just because that’s really good. So that is essentially a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge I call the hero’s challenge. And it’s a little selfish thing I do at the end of all of our episodes that hopefully get me access to stories I wouldn’t find otherwise because not everyone’s out looking to be on podcasts. You’re out on Poddit if you’re looking for stuff but not everyone is. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine and why do you think they should come on our show and share their story the first person that comes to mind for you?

 

Brandon Turner  58:31  

His name is Steve Fredland. Steve Fredland has many businesses, he’s the founder of what’s called the small small business community. Steve Fredland of the small small business community, the last name is FREDLUND. And Steve created the small small business community because he believes that strengthening and elevating small businesses will help strengthen and elevate small towns and cities and revitalize growth and the economy from the ground up. And it’s not just the fact that of course, small businesses are responsible for the employment of so many Americans but it’s also because small businesses are where we have our memories for where we went shopping, and where we buy our groceries and where we buy and maybe going to the comic book store, or maybe going out to a nice local restaurant, those are small businesses, the whole shop, small movement, or the Small Business Saturday or whatever it may be. That’s what the small small business community was created to do. And the great thing about it is that small, small business community is this national. So it doesn’t matter what city you live in, you can join this community and be a part of it and connect with people in other parts of the country. Steve also happens to be a successful business consultant, a speaker, a coach success entrepreneur himself. So Steve Fredlund would be the one.

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:04  

So we’ll reach out and see if we can get an introduction to him and maybe we can get him onto the show. Maybe not. But we’ll try either way. So, in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end of the story that are clapping and cheering for the acts of heroism. So as we close are analogous, I want to know where people can find you, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, Brandon, I would love to get your help building SOP’s. And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people to raise their hand and actually light up the bat signal and ask for your help?

 

Brandon Turner  1:00:37  

Yes. So let me answer the second question first, the best people to light up the signal. You have a business, you may have a team, maybe you’ve been in business for a couple of years. And may have a small team of two or three, it could be a team of up to 15 or more, but you’re not on the same page. Nobody knows the recipes. Or some people have the recipes in their heads, and they don’t know how to share them with others or they refuse to share with others. You have a lot of bottlenecks in your business as a result of this. And you need to remove these bottlenecks in order to free you all upscale. You need to be able to delegate, you need everybody to be able to get on the same page. So those would be the ideal people, you’re wearing too many hats. Whether you’re an owner-manager or a rockstar team member, you’re just wearing too many hats. And the communication is not flowing the way that it should, which means you guys can’t move to the next level. I would ask that you visit recipesforbusiness.com. At recipesforbusiness.com you can sign up for free and you will get my weekly newsletter which talks about how to delegate, automate, outsource and scale what you do, no matter who you are in the business. And in addition to getting the weekly newsletter, you get access to me. The newsletter contains success stories, interviews with fellow subscribers, curated content, original content, tools and resources that you can use in your business. We also give you recipes that you can just download and implement in your business you’ll get some of those as well. And you can also connect with me on social media. When you go to recipesforbusiness.com you can scroll to the bottom and connect with me on Facebook, Linked In YouTube, recipesforbusiness.com. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:02:33  

Awesome, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us today. Brandon, it is excellent to talking with you. And if you are in that space and you are looking to be able to duplicate and scale yourself definitely reach out to Brandon at Get SOP’s you can tell he’s got a passion for this and knows what he’s doing. And I can tell you personally from growing my own business and helping my clients do this, that it is a huge, huge step up and you don’t realize what you’re missing out on by not having your standard operating procedures documented and put together and actually usable checklists for your business it’ll make you more profitable, it’ll make you more competitive. And it’ll give you, as you said earlier, more time to go on vacation and come back to a bigger, better business. So Brandon, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Brandon Turner  1:03:23  

Yes, make the decision. Whether you want to own a job, or own a business, owning a job, of course, you make your own hours and you have your business where you can make your own hours and do your own thing. But if you’re doing everything yourself, or you have a couple of people that are doing that are running the whole business, you won’t be able to get unstuck from the business. The difference between owning a job and owning a business as a business is run by systems and systems are run by people. So I challenge please make the decision whether you want to own a job or own a business.

 

Richard Matthews  1:03:56  

Absolutely, I can feel that that’s one of the reasons why I can travel with my family and kids is because we made the decision to start shifting the job that I owned into a business and growth grow systems and grow people. And so we can travel and explore and do a lot of the things that we do because we’ve made that decision ourselves. And I absolutely second to that make that decision. Again, thank you so much for coming on today Brandon. Really appreciate it.

 

Brandon Turner  1:04:18  

Thank you so much, Richard, and thank you guys for listening. Appreciate you all.