This is the real reason my companies keep growing

A broker wrote in on one of my videos with a question I love: what method did you use for writing your policies? How did you actually go about it? Fair question, because when people ask me why my companies keep growing, they are usually expecting some secret. The secret is writing.

A policy is not what most people picture. It is not a dusty binder from the lawyers. It is the written record of everything that must happen in your business over and over again. Let me walk you through how these things actually get born.

The flow pattern

I organize every company on what I call a flow pattern. Any company starts with human resources. Without people, how do you even say you have a company? Then almost everybody has to sell something, so you have a sales area. If you sell something, money comes in, so you have treasury and finances.

Now that you have people, you sold stuff, and you got their money, you have to deliver it. That is your production area. And once people have received what you sold them, you have customer service and quality control. You get the idea. This is how business works, every business, and the policies live at every step of that flow.

A script is a policy

My biggest business started with nobody but me. I made the decision to go do the business, so I went to human resources, which happened to be myself, and hired five telemarketers. Then I sat down and started writing scripts. Guess what? A script is a policy. It says here is what you say to a person in order to make a sale. A workable process, written down.

That first week was horrible. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, five guys on the phones all day long, and they did not sell one customer. I thought I was losing my mind. I must have tried twenty variations of those scripts and could not get them to work.

So I put on a headset and got on the phones myself, and I closed a bakery up in New Jersey. I will never forget that account, because it was the first one on my road to becoming a wealthy man. Then I asked the only question that matters: what did I just do? What was successful? I rewrote the scripts based on what actually worked, handed them back, and now my guys started closing. And here is the part people miss. Once it was written, I had something to correct them to. No, the policy says do this. The script said say this, and you said that. Without the writing, there is no correction. There is just arguing.

Not a museum piece

A policy is not the Constitution of the United States. It is not some untouchable document in a frame. It is the living, breathing particles of your business.

Take hiring. Someone in your company wants a person for their area. Fine, describe the person. What are the attributes this position needs? We have a company form for that, and the form is itself a policy: I am requesting to hire someone, here are the qualifications, and here is what the position pays. Then it goes up to a senior for approval, because you cannot have just anyone in the building ordering up new staff on a whim.

From there the chain keeps going. The new person helping out in human resources opens a training letter that says exactly how to place the ad: here is the account, here is how you post the position. I have never placed one of those ads myself, but I know exactly where that policy letter lives, and I have people who run it for me. Then come the screening questions that keep the wrong people from walking in the door and getting a job, the in-person interview procedure, and the tests. If the job needs a specific skill, you test for it. All of it written.

A business inhales and it exhales. Its breathing is these actions that must occur over and over and over again. Your job is to write down the breath. What is it? How do you take it? How do you get someone else to take it? How do you know they are doing it, and how do you correct them when they are not? You figure it out one step at a time, you write it up, and now you have developed a group.

Sheet music

I grew up in rock and roll. A band is five guys: a drummer, a bass player, a couple of guitar players, and somebody who can sing his heart out. But have you ever watched an orchestra? Hundreds of people, all these different instruments, everything organized, and every one of them has sheet music on the stand. That sheet music is the policy for that orchestra. It lets everyone know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it, with the leader out front keeping it all on time.

Your business is no different. You are the one out front, and your people need the sheet music: what to do, what note to play, when to play it, and a reference point to come back to. And the beautiful part about your music is the sound it makes. Ching, ching, ching. You are making money, honey.

Here is the payoff. Your people are hungry, and they want more. Good. Get the policies in, empower them to do the job well, and let them push you up the organization. If you feel like you are being sucked down into your business and you cannot get free, this is the piece you are missing. I even keep policies on policy in my companies: written instructions on how to write one, what viewpoint the author has to take, and how to make it understandable. That is how serious this is. Write the sheet music. That is the real reason my companies keep growing.