The policy system that made me a millionaire

A couple of weeks ago I shot a video about my policies and how they lifted me up and out of the company. A viewer wrote back with a great question, and before I answer it I owe everybody a correction. In that video I said I had made a hundred and three policies. I misspoke. The real number is thirteen hundred. If that does not make you go gulp, I do not know what will.

His question was the right one, though. How do you find the motivation to write all that? How do you find the time? Fair questions, buddy. Here is how I think about both.

Escape and move up

I have been a self-employed businessman since I was twenty-five years old, and every owner I know is trying to do the same two things: escape and move up. When I say escape, I do not mean escape the business. I mean escape the day-to-day dealings, the little decisions that only you can make because nobody else knows how you want them made.

So we hire help. You bring somebody in on a conditional basis and you hope they are bright and shiny. Maybe they have a specific skill, accounting, computers, whatever. Maybe they are a general employee, or they are going to sell for you. I do not care what it is. If you want to grow your business, you are going to need help.

And that is the motivation, right there. Every policy I write is a piece of the company that no longer needs me standing in the room. The policies are what lifted me up and out. You do not need to be motivated to write documents. You need to be motivated to escape, and the documents are the escape route.

Thank you for trying, but you do it this way

Here is the raw material you get to work with. The people who come to you do not have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. They have to be willing, and they cannot be stupid. That is it, and that is the resource we have as business owners. You take those willing people, you train them, and you give them directions.

In practice it sounds like this. Thank you for trying that, but you do it this way. Okay, thank you for trying, but you do it this way. Over and over, correction after correction.

Now here is the part that changes everything. That comment, you do it this way, has got to be in writing, brother. It has got to be written down. In my company we call those training letters. And this is also the answer to the time question. I did not sit down one year and write thirteen hundred policies. I wrote them one correction at a time, across a whole career. The moment you fix something out loud, write it down, and you never have to fix it from scratch again.

One warning about the writing itself. A training letter has to be understandable. Do not let it be written by somebody who feels like a professor and needs to feel important. If your people cannot understand the instruction, you do not have a policy. You have a decoration.

Policy on policy

Over the years I developed four or five policies on how to actually do this, how to handle the policies themselves. I typed the whole thing out. Believe it or not, it is called policy on policy. If you want it, reach out and ask me and I will get it to you. And understand something: I have nothing to sell you. I have spent my life working on how to become more successful, and sharing what I found is the whole point.

I will tell you one more thing, and it might sound like the stupidest thing in the world, but it is true. You know what happens when you become super successful? It gets lonely. There are not a lot of other truly successful people out there in the world. So I want to help you. I want some people I can go play with. Let me help you become successful, and then let us go play around the world. I mean that with all my heart.