Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

by Mike Michalowicz

Overview

Do you worry that your business will collapse without your constant presence? Are you sacrificing your family, friendships, and freedom to keep your business alive? What if instead your business could run itself, freeing you to do what you love when you want, while it continues to grow and turn a profit?

It’s possible. And it's easier than you think.

If you're like most entrepreneurs, you started your business so you could be your own boss, make the money you deserve, and live life on your own terms. In reality, you're bogged down in the daily grind, constantly putting out fires, answering an endless stream of questions, and continually hunting for cash.

Now, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First and other small-business bestsellers, offers a straightforward step-by-step path out of this dilemma. In Clockwork, he draws on more than six years of research and real life examples to explain his simple approach to making your business ultra-efficient.
Among other powerful strategies, you will discover how to:

Make your employees act like owners: Free yourself from micromanaging by using a simple technique to empower your people to make smart decisions without you.

Pinpoint your business's most important function: Unleash incredible efficiency by identifying and focusing everyone on the one function that is most crucial to your business.

Know what to fix next: Most entrepreneurs try to fix every inefficiency at once and end up fixing nothing. Use the "weakest link in the chain" method to find the one fix that will add the most value now.

Whether you have a staff of one, one hundred, or somewhere in between, whether you're a new entrepreneur or have been overworked and overstressed for years, Clockwork is your path to finally making your business work for you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525534013
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/21/2018
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mike Michalowicz (mi-CAL-low-wits) launched and sold two mulitmillion-dollar companies and is co-founder of Profit First Professionals, a membership organization of accountants, bookkeepers and business coaches who teach the Profit First method. He is the host of the American Express Turning Points podcast, a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is a popular speaker and has shared his insights on business and entrepreneurship at TEDx, creativeLIVE, INCmty and others. He is the author of Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His columns have appeared in The Entrepreneur Magazine, Open Forum, and Harvard Business Review.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 Why Your Business is (STILL) Stuck 1

Chapter 2 Step One: Analyze Your Company's Time 20

Chapter 3 Step Two: Declare Your Company's Queen Bee Role 56

Chapter 4 Step Three: Protect And Serve The QBR 71

Chapter 5 Step Four: Capture Systems 101

Chapter 6 Step Five: Balance The Team 121

Chapter 7 Step Six: Know Who You're Serving 152

Chapter 8 Step Seven: Keep An Eye On Your Business 170

Chapter 9 Pushback (And What To Do About It) 204

Chapter 10 The Four-Week Vacation 217

Closing 237

Acknowledgments 241

Glossary of Key Terms 243

Author's Note 246

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

07/02/2018
Michalowicz (Profit First), host of the Profit First podcast, takes an unvarnished look at the hard realities of life as an entrepreneur, offering readers clever and effective ways to regain control of their most precious commodity: time. He shows readers how to achieve “organizational efficiency” and manage resources so that the most urgent tasks consistently get accomplished. First, readers must determine their “4D Mix”—Michalowicz’s term for how time is allocated among doing, deciding, delegating, and designing—and make adjustments to optimize it so that their businesses can run smoothly. The author provides a list of seven steps to take readers there and dedicates a full chapter to each. He suggests that the reader “declare your company’s queen bee role,” identify the core function of the business, “capture systems” (figure out how workflows function in practice, not in theory), and “balance the team” to maximize efficiencies. Michalowicz also coaches businesspeople through the mindset shift of asking “What are the most important things to get done?” and “Whom will I have get this work done?” rather than “How do I get more done?” Full of familiar but not gimmicky advice, Michalowicz’s guide will please entrepreneurs with its actionable and well-presented ideas. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Clockwork
 
“If there will ever be a patron saint for entrepreneurs, Mike Michalowicz is surely a top contender for the position. He has personally been through every point of the entrepreneurial roller coaster, which gives him the credibility to speak to entrepreneurs in the kind of honest language they want to hear. Avoiding the airy, high-altitude maxims so common in other books, Clockwork is chock full of practical and relatable advice. It reminds entrepreneurs why they set out on the adventure and offers them a toolbox to take with them.”
-       Simon Sinek, Optimist and author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last
 
“Clockwork is a how-to-manual for helping a small business owner achieve the purpose of owning a business – time and financial freedom. Masterful job Mike!”
-       Gino Wickman, author of Traction and Creator of EOS   
  
"When your business runs like clockwork, you can finally go off the clock! In this fun book, Mike shows how you, too, can achieve the dream of an enterprise that thrives while you enjoy all life has to offer."
-       Laura Vanderkam, author of Off the Clock and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast
 
"Clockwork teaches you to own your business rather than run your business. It will give you more free time, more automated cash and more freedoms to be yourself. I'm grateful for this easy to implement system."
-       Donald Miller, author of Building a StoryBrand
 
"Does it feel like your business owns you rather than you owning your business? This is the book that will help you build a business that works for you — rather than the other way round!" 
– L. David Marquet, Captain, US Navy (retired), author of Turn the Ship Around!
                                                                      
"Are you drowning in work? Many — if not most — entrepreneurs are barely keeping their heads above the rising tide of tasks demanding their attention. What if you could design your business so that you could climb above the grind and focus on just the work you really want to do? In Mike Michalowicz’s newest book, he sets out a seven-point plan for doing just that. Read CLOCKWORK and take the first step towards taking back your life.”
- Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive

From the Publisher