Creating Order (and Profits) Out of Chaos

Nick Sonnenberg became an expert on how to organize a sleek, efficiently running company the hard way …

The VERY hard way.

He and his business partner sprinted into seven-figures in year one of their company with four feet firmly on the gas, but, as he tells it, they were not paying attention to two key things.

When his partner – who was the public face of the business suddenly left, Sonnenberg’s company took a 40% hit in revenue. Suddenly he had to cash out his IRA.  His father took a second mortgage to keep the company alive. And Nick had to take a cold, dispassionate look at the nuts and bolts of his enterprise - every expenditure, every inefficiency, every penny.

“As I was looking at my broken business,” he recalls, “I started to identify underlying issues and the main one was wasted time. By the end of the day after getting back to people by email and text and all the communications channels I was on, and trying to find messages and documents, my day was shot. I could see the one big thing I needed to do: identify and destroy the time-sucks.”

Watch Nick Sonnenberg at METAL

He identified three essential time condensers that were needed to right his company’s ship.  These became the core of his CPR® Business Efficiency Framework which he not only outlines but shows to tools to make the whole system work in his new bestselling book, Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work.

C stands for Communications – and he shows how to eliminate the fragmented “pings and dings” that distract you and your team’s deep work. Turn off all notifications. If someone needs you, they will call you. 

P stands for Plan – know what people are doing in your company. For instance, make sure everyone is clearly aligned and check in consistently so you know what’s going on.

Resources – document your IP and SOPs. A one hour investment in SOPs can save you thousands of hours of wasted time. 

Once he got these systems built, businesses for Sonnenberg started booming. Tony Robbins, Ethereum, and other industry giants reached out and now he’s teaching his system to others.

“You can’t put all your time in sales and marketing even though growth feels great,” he says, “a twenty percent investment of your time in systems can turn things around."

Today's email was brought to you by Adam Gilad.