Lia

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. This week, we are going to talk about some of the common challenges in implementing the Clockwork system in your business.

So, Briar, what is the first challenge that comes to mind, that entrepreneurs often get stuck in. 

Briar

Yeah, I feel like when people are specifically working through the Clockwork system and they have maybe read the book on their own and are trying to go through step by step, one of the biggest things is getting stuck in the align phase.

And that's the phase where we talk about figuring out the big bang, your big promise and your QBR. And I feel like, you know, getting stuck there and sort of circling on yourself trying to decide whether you've got the right QBR or whether your big promise is, you know, the marketing message that you want it to be. And, you know, to other dance studio owners and seeing what their QBR is. And does that make sense with your QBR?

It just feels like this big cycle that we can easily get sucked into and never move past that align phase.

Lia

Definitely. This is definitely a place where you can get stuck. And I think, think one of the ways we can get stuck here is also losing sight of the end game.

The end game of Clockwork is to have an efficient business that can run without you. As the CEO, as the business owner or entrepreneur, right?

So this align phase is still trying to get you there. It's not sort of a make a work kind of phase.

The goal of aligning is so that you and everyone on your team knows where you're going and where to continue to focus. It's your end game and your roadmap, your end point and your roadmap to get there, right? So it's all about being efficient and making sure that everything we do is staying aligned with our business and with the business that you created and how you want your business to run.

So people get stuck here but it's also a phase should happen relatively quickly because the next phase of Clockworking, which is integrating, capturing your systems and time tracking and making sure that your workload is balanced according to what we call the 4D mix, that's the place where you need to spend a lot of time in and that is going to take the time.

So we want to work through this align phase pretty quickly actually, we don't want to get stuck here, we don't want to get bogged down and so we need to have momentum in this align phase.

Briar

Yeah, and I think it's important to remember too that when we've made decisions about things in our align phase, they are not stuck in stone.

We can always change and edit them down the road if we feel as a team we need to. So it's okay to choose a QBR or to choose your big promise, and move on from it, use them in the next phases of the Clockwork system. know that you can always go back and edit them if you feel like you need to. So you're not stuck in the decisions that you make in the align phase. 

Lia

Yeah, particularly with that QBR, that queen bee role. You know, if you, if you come up with one and you start implementing it and you're finding, this actually isn't helping us deliver on a big promise in an effective and efficient way, go back and change it.

That is okay. The point of that QBR is that you can consistently, effectively and efficiently deliver on your big promise. And if it's not giving you that, if it's not helping you do that, then you definitely go back and change it.

So yeah, like, like you said, Briar, we can move through this phase relatively quickly knowing that if what we decide here or doesn't end up serving us in the way it needs to serve us if we can go back and revisit it.

But we don't want to spend a year just thinking about this, just thinking about what our QBR is. We want to get through it and we want to move on to the next phase.

And this could even be done in a few hours. You could get your leadership team together and go through this in a morning.

We've done that in our studio. We, you know, on one of our leadership team retreats, we just sat down and we did it.

And we didn't give ourselves three months to get through this phase. We gave ourselves three hours to get through this phase.

Briar

Absolutely. And that sort of leads, Lia, to the next thing of setting yourself some deadlines. Having clear end points of when you want to be finished certain parts of the Clockworking system and the system as a whole.

And one of the first thing that we do with our clients is we help them set their vacation dates are one week vacation, two week vacations, three week vacations, and four week vacations, and having those deadlines in place gives us timelines to help us work through the Clockworking system with, you know, parameters around it, of when things have to be done by.

Lia

Exactly, because if you know in 12 or 18 months, you're going to be away for a month in your business, you're going to take four weeks away from your business unplugged.

You have something very clear to work towards, and you know, you got to get it done in that time.

So having those deadlines really helps. You know, something that if you are a fan, a follower of Mike Michalowicz, you will know this. He talks about this in many of his books, not just Clockworking. It's a big concept in Profit First. It's Parkinson's Law, which is that something, a task or time will expand or contract depending on how much you give it.

So if we give ourselves five years to implement Clockwork, it's going to take us five years to implement Clockwork. If we give ourselves 12 months to implement Clockwork, it will take us 12 months to implement Clockwork. So we can, you know, you can set those deadlines how you want, but know, that setting yourself a deadline is going to give you the impetus, it's going to give you the momentum, and it's going to give you the goal to work towards. If you're just implementing Clockwork, you might never get there.

So definitely those deadlines are really key and really important. And like Briar said, this is one of the first things we do with our clients. So we all know, us as your coach and as your guide, as well as you, as well as your team, everyone knows what the time frame is, and what the goal is to work towards.

Briar

Absolutely, and I think that one of our other issues or challenges that we have come across within people implementing Clockwork is really getting overwhelmed with the integrate phase, especially time tracking and capturing systems.

Those phases, like you mentioned Lia, take a little bit longer, they can feel a little bit daunting, and therefore people tend to maybe shy away from doing them, and maybe that's part of the reason they get stuck in the online phase.

Lia

You're just putting off the inevitable. It has to happen.

Briar

Agreed, agreed, but I think, you know, people sort of know it's coming, so maybe that's one of the reasons they stay in the align phase, but I mean last week we talked about how to, you know, capture systems with less stress, so there are ways and tips and tricks of doing those integrate phase tasks to make them less daunting and a little bit more doable. And that's part of our job as coaches is to help work you through that and help get through those overwhelming times.

And having people to talk to about it is always helpful. So if you have other studio owners that you're working through Clockwork with, that can sometimes help. It can sometimes lead to more overwhelm though. If one person is really stressed and the stress leads to other people being stressed.

But I do think working together with some team members or coaches does help us get through some of those stressful situations.

Lia

For sure. And the other thing about capturing the systems is it's not all on you. I mean, unless you're a solo entrepreneur, then it might all be on you.

But for a lot of dance studio owners, we do have a team. We have some administrative support. We have teachers that often step into administrative roles as well.

So capturing systems is not just for one person to do, it's for the people who are doing that task to capture that system.

And so,  it is still overwhelming, it can certainly be overwhelming. But, you know, the overwhelm can be shared amongst your team and amongst your staff, and letting them know that there is a stress-free way to do this and to capture these systems.

And again, they'll know that timeline. And if you work with a Clockwork-certified coach, we'll be able to give you a timeline that makes sense for your business and help you come up with the best timeline for your business. So, we're not setting unrealistic expectations for you and your team. 

But, you know, to spread that workout amongst the people who are doing the job, so that you as the business owner are not trying to capture a system of something that you don't ever do anymore, right?

You might never sell a dance. because you're never there in the evenings and so you shouldn't be the one to capture that system.

The person who sells dancewear should be the one to capture that system, right? So we also want to know that although we want to capture all of the systems in your business, it's not all on you to capture them. It's on your team and it's going to be a team effort.

Briar

Absolutely. I think another common thing I have seen with people going through Clockwork is reading the book and not implementing. Or reading the book and starting to implement, getting stuck in the align phase and then just giving up or like I mentioned reading through the whole thing and thinking they've got it and moving on to the next how to book without truly diving in doing the work and getting your studio fully Clockwork.

Have you noticed that too, Lia?

Lia

For sure, I think it is common with entrepreneurs, especially for us to be kind of like education happy. I don't know what the word is here, but it's like constantly trying to learn something all the time, learn the next best thing, the next trick, the next tool.

And I think in part that comes from, you know, starting businesses and knowing we might be great dance teachers, but we know nothing about running a business. And so we've had to learn all of this stuff. We've had to reach out and get the education that we need in order to start and run a business effectively.

But I think that can also be a trap, right, in that we get so caught up in what's the next educational opportunity, what's this person telling me to do, what's that person telling me to do,  this book, that book, this book, that book, this podcast. 

So we can definitely think, we've read the book, we know the concepts, we're good, we've got our QBR, let's go, and then you move on to something else, right?

And the problem with that is that you haven't actually implemented any of the concepts here in Clockwork. And, you know, Clockwork is so important for your business.

We've talked about this, I'm pretty sure on this podcast before in the past, we've talked about this a lot personally. Life is going to happen to you and your business, regardless of whether you're prepared for it or not.

So Clockwork allows you to be prepared for it, it allows you to your business to be prepared for life to happen, allows you to be prepared for when life happens. 

When we don't prepare for these things, it's like in personal finance everyone talks about having an emergency fund, right? When you don't have an emergency fund, your roof is still going to collapse. Whether you have an emergency fund or not, if you have an emergency fund, you're able to take care of it. If you don't have an emergency fund, you know what you still have to take care of it. You just don't have the ability to take care of it or you don't have the financial means to take care of it. So you have to figure it out. 

This is what Clockwork is. It's an emergency fund for our business.

Life is going to happen. Whether it's to you or whether you're key team members, whether it's a positive life event or a negative life event, it's going to happen.

So just reading the book and thinking you're good and moving on to the next thing, you're not actually doing the work to make sure that your business is prepared and is able to sustain itself regardless of what happens to you and to your life. 

This is the work that you have done, that you have built from nothing, you've built it from scratch. It's your business baby, it sustains you and your family. It is, you know, it's really important to make sure that it is protected.

If something happens to you that your business doesn't crumble because this is what puts food on your plate, this is what puts food on the plate for your family, for maybe your kids, if you have kids, you want to make sure that this is taken care of.

So I urge you not to fall into that trap of reading the book and thinking you're done. The work has to be done.

Briar

I love this and I'm going to repeat what you just said, Lia. Clockwork is the emergency fund of your business.

And I love you talking about being education happy, because in the fitness world, we joke about everybody asking about the best type of exercise, and the answer always is the one you do consistently.

So it's the same when it comes to business and the education that you're taking in, right? You can read 10 books in a year, but which one are you going to fully dive in and follow and implement?

That's the one that's going to work. It doesn't matter if you've read one book or 10 books. If you are doing the work of that one book that you have literally spent the time and energy in, that's the one that's going to work for you and for your business.

You need to fully implement the information that you are taking in. So I love that, Lia. That's great.

Lia

That reminds me of something that you can hear Adrienne Dorison, who is the co-creator of the Clockwork system, and she owns and operates Run Like Clockwork, that is part of this. 

On the Run Like Clockwork podcast, she has talked about this before, which is that she will read the same book multiple times.

So like you say, you can read 10 different business books in a year, or you could read the same business book 10 times in a year. And you're probably going to get a better business and have better results if you read one book 10 times in a year and actually implement that work and those concepts rather than reading 10 different books in a year.

Choose one, whether it's Clockwork or something else, but you know, we hope it's Clockwork. Choose one and take the time to truly understand the time to truly understand the concepts and to truly integrate those concepts into your business.

Briar

Yeah, because every time we read it or every time we hear a podcast about it or we chat with somebody about it, we take in different information. We learn different bits and pieces of it based on where we are today. So if you are in your first year of business and you read Clockwork and then you're in your 10th year of business and you read Clockwork again, you're going to pull different information that you can use from it because you are not the same person and your business is not the same business as it was the last time you read the book.

So I do really agree with you there, Lia, on reading the same information or talking about the same information or listening to the same information.

You know, I've read Clockwork, I've listened to the audiobook, I have listened to the Run Like Clockwork podcast, like we talked about it obviously on a daily basis between each other and with our clients and I'm constantly learning and pulling different information from the topics.

Lia

Exactly. Okay, I feel like we got really impassioned here.

Briar

I agree!

Lia

This is a little different from our usual podcast, we got super into this conversation. Let's end it here, Briar.

If you'd like to talk with us some more about Clockwork and implementing it in your business, you know where to find us, the Balanced Entrepreneur.ca.