Stop Chasing the "One Thing" That Will Fix Everything

Many founders approach automation with a single idea in mind: “If I just automate this one thing, everything will get better.” But the truth is, businesses aren’t built on one system—they run on dozens of interconnected ones.

In this episode of Automate Your Agency, Alane and Micah challenge the “one workflow” mindset and show why real freedom comes from systemizing the entire business, not just automating a single task. They share stories from their own experiences—mergers, exits, and client work—on how building layered systems can reduce employee overhead, eliminate bottlenecks, and even increase a company’s valuation.

You’ll learn:

• Why no business truly has “just one process”
• How to shift from transactional fixes to long-term systemization
• The risks of relying on institutional knowledge trapped in people’s heads
• How systemization supports different founder goals (taking time off, changing roles, exiting, or building a legacy)
• Practical ways to prioritize what to automate first—based on impact, not just feelings

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the day-to-day of your business or wondered how to prioritize what to systemize next, this episode will give you the roadmap—and the mindset shift—to get started.

🔗 Mentioned in this episode:

• Priority Impact Report: Stop guessing where you business is broken! 

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to Automate Your Agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips, and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations. Micah. I've been seeing this pop up more often and just conversations and calls and it's the idea of I have a system I want to automate and I think, how do you only have one that.

0:00:38 - (Micah): Oh, I see what you're saying. So like they're, they're thinking, I would like to do this one thing. I want to build this one workflow.

0:00:47 - (Alane): Right. It's not prioritizing and saying this is the most important thing that I've been thinking about. It's that I only have this one thing that I want to do.

0:00:56 - (Micah): Yeah. Yeah, I've got a. Yeah, okay. I see where you're going with this. I've got many examples, but one comes to mind. I had a conversation recently. They had an idea of this giant solution, but it's. It's one giant solution that is probably a 12 month project. And what's interesting is as we've continued this discussion, the question becomes not should we build this entire solution because you said the word prioritization a second ago, is are there other smaller, easier workflows that we could prioritize ahead of this that would actually free up time and resources and money to then accomplish this bigger solution without so much strain and essentially build like a roadmap to achieve a big goal that they're trying to get to?

0:01:52 - (Alane): Yeah, it's the idea that there are so many systems in your business. I do not know of a business that has one. Only one thing that they do and they rinse it off.

0:02:03 - (Micah): Only one process. Only one process.

0:02:06 - (Alane): And if you are listening to this and you think I only have one process, please listen to this entire episode because I do not agree with you. But that there's this idea that I only have one thing that I need to systemize. And if you even just have one employee, that is incorrect because that means they need training. That means that there's more than one system that needs to be in place. So there are multiple things that need to be done in a business that need to be systemized. And, and really the, like, the other side of this that I keep having conversations about recently and I don't know if just founders are tired, but the idea that they want to get out of their business and that could look a million different ways, that could just be like they just Want to be able to take time off and not have to answer questions all day. It could be that they're actually looking to exit. It could be that they are trying to build a legacy for their family and for their kids or something to take over. So what their time looks like could be different. On how they want to get out of their business, but the end result is the same.

0:03:08 - (Alane): They want to get out of the day to day part of their business. And yeah, that isn't a transactional process. That isn't. I just have this one thing, if I just had this one thing automated, it would save so much time. It isn't like that your business has to be systemized. Whole business, the entire thing from hiring to firing and everything in between.

0:03:31 - (Micah): Yes, a hundred percent. And all the different pieces. I mean like you said from hiring. Right. There is the hiring process, but then there's the onboarding process, but then there's the training process, but then there's the documentation of the SOPs for quick reference process. There's so many systems and that's operational systems, but you can even think of people systems. So how do you actually go in and, and train a leadership team, delegate, allow them to start making decisions, get them to pull the data that are needed for the reports so that you can look at it and know where things are at. Like those are multiple systems happening to get that through there, you know, side tangent on this real quick. I've got a buddy who owns an agency and we were talking the other day and one of the things that he wants to do is just kind of change his role in the business. So not necessarily get out of the business, but get out of his current day to day of what he's doing right now.

0:04:40 - (Micah): And what he wants to be able to do is just be more hands on directly with almost a consulting approach where his team executes. And right now he's more in the execution side of things. And so it's really interesting to even see the difference of how he could go from okay, I'm, I'm in this part of the business, but I really want to be over here. And again like you're saying that's not a transactional. I'm just going to flip the switch and now start doing that because he's got to fill the gap that he would create by moving his responsibility and his role in his position to the other side of things that he wants to do.

0:05:20 - (Alane): Yeah. So part of this is, okay, if you need to systemize your business like that can feel really Overwhelming. And so if you. If you change your mindset from if I just had this one thing automated or a workflow for it, then my life would be better. Instead of having that mindset, thinking about, okay, I am really going to systemize this business so I can do blank, get out of the day to day, be a consultant in my company, exit one day, whatever it is, then it is thinking about how do I build the system for continuing to systemize this business. But it is a mindset because it is not start and stop.

0:06:01 - (Alane): If you stop, that means no systems are being improved or built. It is an ongoing thing that you are constantly working with your team and teaching them how to think like that, too.

0:06:14 - (Micah): Yeah, I think so. I think maybe saying that a different way, Alane, and correct me if I get this wrong, but what you're saying is if you were to just implement one workflow and have that as a transactional solution, that you can do that, Right? But you're either hiring somebody, doing it yourself, or training your team to. To implement that workflow. In order to do that, you have to figure out all the nuances, figure out the workflow, do some diagramming, do all of this stuff.

0:06:48 - (Micah): Why would you train your team or hire somebody to get into that much detail about your business, about your operations, about your goals, to only go, we're only doing this little tiny piece of it when they could already leverage all that knowledge to then move on to the next one, move on to the next one, move on to the next one. And I think that the mindset here is, where do we move and how do we prioritize? That question comes up a lot.

0:07:20 - (Micah): And so for me, the answer is, what's the big, big, big goal here that we're trying to get to?

0:07:27 - (Alane): Mm. When I. So this is even before AI, this is when we had done our merger. We're working in the other company who had no systems, and that's why they wanted us to be a part of it, is to put in those systems. There were no AI, there were no agents. Like, this was years and years ago. What we did, we put in a knowledge base, we put in a work management system, we put in some automation, some zaps, but these were basic zaps. This is nothing like we're doing today.

0:07:57 - (Alane): And we decreased the employee overhead by 20%. People are our most expensive resources. That is it. But we tend to think, well, I need to hire somebody. Well, do you have a system for what they're working in? Do they know how to do the job? Because you are Spending a lot of resources on somebody that's at 40% capacity in reality.

0:08:23 - (Micah): Oh, hopefully. I mean, in their first month. How well is your hiring system? How well put together is your onboarding system? How well put together is your training system? And I mean, just to kind of juxtapose the difference between what we did with the knowledge base before and what you can do with knowledge bases now, it's insane to think that you can create a bunch of SOPs, save them in documents, put that into a database, and then train your team to chat with these documents so you could have your entire knowledge base in a database and have your team be able to ask it anything. How do I blank?

0:09:01 - (Micah): And that just changes everything. But to me, that's like if we just went into a client's company and just implemented that, they're going to get some major efficiency and benefits and value from all of that, but it's not going to achieve a big goal. That alone is not going to help me get out of the day to day. Mm. It's gonna help me reduce repeat questions a percentage.

0:09:25 - (Alane): It's gonna help a percentage. I think.

0:09:27 - (Micah): Yes.

0:09:28 - (Alane): This, this. I remember when we were selling the company, Micah, and they're asking a ton of questions. Well, what does your process like this look like? What's your process like this look like? What's. How do you do this? We had everything dialed in. We had an sop, we had a system, we used asana at the time. We had a process for everything with an SOP and a knowledge base for questions that is why we were desirable for being purchased.

0:09:58 - (Alane): That could be translated to any way that you want to change your role in the company, whether you're looking to exit or not. If I sat down with you and we did a one on one and I acted like I was doing due diligence with you and I asked you, hey, what's your process? What for this, this and this, and you could answer every single question, then you are in a great position. But if you cannot and it is spaghetti and it's chaos, then.

0:10:27 - (Micah): Or if it goes back to me, like in this case, if it goes back to me and my answer is it's in my head, or people have to ask me about that actually, I'm the bottleneck, whatever, right?

0:10:39 - (Alane): That was running in the back of my head, Micah. So I'm so glad you said that people aren't your process because that they hold institutional knowledge. That means they are. They have to be a part of the process to get the process done. And that is not a systemized process.

0:10:57 - (Micah): Yep.

0:10:58 - (Alane): That means if that person leaves, then the process is screwed. The process needs to be able to run without people and through a system and anybody could pick up and know what to do.

0:11:11 - (Micah): And this applies if you are looking to exit at some point, sell your business. This applies if you are looking to merge. This applies if you want to acquire another business. This applies if you want to hand it to your kids. The business.

0:11:24 - (Alane): If you're looking to acquire a business. These are great questions to ask the company that you're acquiring, man.

0:11:30 - (Micah): Right. Because if you put yourself in the buyer's position or the acquirer's position, why in the world would you ever buy a company where all operations bottleneck at.

0:11:43 - (Alane): The founder or worse, an employee? Because employees leave and a founder, they're in the, the. They're in it. They're. They're not going to leave. So they're just going to keep digging themselves in deeper. But an employee can leave. That's a red flag.

0:11:57 - (Micah): Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. And if they leave with institutional knowledge, I mean, we saw that so many times with our last business. We see that with this business. We even see that now with AI and employees creating their own ChatGPT personal accounts, putting company data in there and then leaving. Like we talked about that recently, that's another form of institutional knowledge. And there's not a standardized. If there's not a standardized way to implement this or do this within your organization, then it's an issue.

0:12:30 - (Alane): Yep. Then that employee walks away with your company knowledge. And that could be, like you said, in a personal ChatGPT account.

0:12:37 - (Micah): Yeah. Yeah. So I think to kind of summarize all of this and what we're trying to say with this episode is it's very interesting that I would say there's this whole spectrum of ways that you could improve your business. And on one, you get really dialed in and you go, I'm going to hire somebody to help me do X. That's, that's cool. But we've been involved with hundreds and hundreds of businesses and it is the very small percentage that have said I need to do X because that's part of this bigger plan, which is part of this bigger plan which is going to help me achieve this goal.

0:13:19 - (Micah): And a lot of times when we ask. Start asking those questions, we get a lot of like, I don't know, I haven't thought about that. I don't know how to prioritize this. I don't know where to go with that. And I think These are some of the most important questions you can ask yourself. What is your plan today? And. And maybe you don't know, but pick one. It can change. Right? Just tell yourself, at some point, I'm going to sell this.

0:13:43 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:13:44 - (Micah): Because if I do this for 10 years, I'm going to get burnt out. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm sick of this industry, whatever it might be. Pick a goal. That's your direction to work backwards from. Build a roadmap helping you get to that goal. And yes, eventually it's going to be a bunch of these pieces, but prioritize them, get them in order, or talk to somebody that can help you do this.

0:14:07 - (Alane): Yeah. Prioritizing can be the hardest part. And a lot of times we do things on feelings versus data. And so we do. Will we feel like this has taken a long time? Well. Well, why don't we do a priority impact and see what the priorities really are? Where are things really getting bottlenecked? Where's frustration happen with the employees? Because when employees are frustrated, they'll leave. They'll go somewhere else. And we want to keep employees for as long as possible because we're constantly training and teaching them the business.

0:14:38 - (Alane): So keeping them happy is an important part. So finding out not just from what you feel like could be a priority, but really what is causing heartburn in your team and prioritizing and working backwards from there.

0:14:51 - (Micah): Yes. I'm glad you brought that up, Alane, because that's. I think that's a part that I missed a second ago, which is. It's not just you doing this in a vacuum and making these priorities by yourself. Because like you said, each day is gonna. One thing is gonna feel urgent today, tomorrow a different thing's gonna feel urgent. And that's where I think a lot of leaders get stuck on prioritization, because every day it feels like a different priority. So how the hell are we going to figure this bigger goal out? And it's just.

0:15:23 - (Micah): I'm just going to put out fires every single day of my career.

0:15:27 - (Alane): Yeah. I mean, founders feel like they're carrying the weight on these decisions. And we even changed how we're doing our AI roadmap training. Where we go in and train a company is that we say, bring in four members of your leadership. Leadership team in doing this, and we are going to work with them for half a day and find out where these bottlenecks are and help prioritize with them also involved. Because if you're carrying all this knowledge, and I even say this in my speaking engagements, you're here learning, but that ends with you leaving this room because no one else at your company is trained or went through this experience or got this training.

0:16:08 - (Alane): So we need to meet them too, get them involved in this. That way, one person isn't carrying the burden.

0:16:14 - (Micah): Yeah. Love it.

0:16:16 - (Alane): All right, so if anybody's interested, we do have the AI Roadmap workshops coming out and we have the Priority Impact Report and we even have an episode on that. So we'll link that in the comments. Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate Your Agency. We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review.

0:16:38 - (Alane): Your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners. If you're looking for more resources, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai for free content and tools for automating your business. Join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business. Bye for now.