The Three Day Work Week

The Three Day Work Week
WORK LESS.
MAKE MORE.
By Tony Rudd
A Guide to Freeing Yourself From Your Business and

Operating a High-Performing, Low-Touch Organization
© 2021 Embark Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. No part of

this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic,
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nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or
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This publication is designed to provide accurate and

authoritative information regarding the subject matter covered. It
is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If you
require legal advice or other expert assistance, you should seek
the services of a competent professional.
Disclaimer: The author makes no guarantees to the results

you’ll achieve by reading this book. All business requires risk
and hard work. The results and case studies presented in this
book represent results achieved working directly with the author.
Your results may vary when undertaking any new business
venture or strategy.
Table of Contents
Introduction ...............................................................................1
Part 1 - Setting the Stage

Chapter 1 - Reality Check ........................................................... 5
Chapter 2 - Who This Book Is For ............................................ 10
Chapter 3 - Adaptability Is The Key ......................................... 15
Chapter 4 - Processes: The Cornerstone of Freedom ................ 20
Chapter 5 - Beware of Promises That Seem Too Good To Be
True ................................................................................................... 26
Part 2 - The Freedom Through Structure Framework

Chapter 6 - Bringing a Dose of Corporate to Small Businesses 30
Chapter 7 - The Six Steps to Freedom ...................................... 33
Chapter 8 - The Art and Science of Employees and
Delegation ................................................................................... 41
Part 3 - Pull Yourself Out of Your Business

Chapter 9 - Process Mapping .................................................... 49
Chapter 10 - Automate Your Way to Freedom ......................... 54
Chapter 11 - Monitoring Your Business From Afar ................. 58
Conclusion .................................................................................. 60
Summary ..................................................................................... 61
Next Steps ................................................................................... 63
About the Author ........................................................................ 66
Introduction
I think that you will find, as you read this book, that I am a
straightforward person and don’t like to sugar coat things. As a
result, I’m going to tell you the exact reasons I wrote this book.
The first reason I wrote this book is to convince you to hire my

team and me to help you implement the framework outlined in this
book.
The second reason I wrote this book is to give you so much help
and value in advance that you will be convinced to hire us to help you.
While I was getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I

spent three years teaching math and computer science at the college
level. Throughout my corporate career, I was frequently tapped to
lead programs and projects, especially customer service-related ones.
Why do I tell you this? Because I like helping people, and I want to
help you, too.
If you’ve made it to purchasing this book, you know that the

problem I’m helping people solve is when they are overworked,
overwhelmed, or buried in their business. Too often, people start a
business with a vision and a dream, but then quickly find themselves
overwhelmed by the numerous day-to-day tasks that are involved.
Forbes recently published a study that 72% of business owners are
overwhelmed by their responsibilities, so rest assured that you’re not
alone if you feel that way.
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The goal of this book is to introduce and walk through the

framework I have developed to change that feeling, to offload those
responsibilities with clarity, sustainability, and rigor in mind. Too
many articles and gurus offer a quick fix to this problem, but their
solutions are neither sustainable nor scaleable. The framework
outlined in this book incorporates the lessons and tools learned from
leading initiatives and organization in large corporations, as well as
my own personal business.
In order to accomplish this, I’ve structured the book as follows:
First, we will assess the current state of your business. This will
be done through introducing concepts crucial to the framework, as
well as through several self-assessments spread throughout the book.
Next, I will make a case for why process understanding and

mapping is often overlooked, but the true key to unlocking your
freedom from your business. So many small business owners skip
this or lack clarity, but from my corporate experience, this is the
foundation of having a business that runs smoothly with little
oversight.
After that, we’ll dive into the Freedom Through Structure

Framework. This framework will outline the steps required to take
you from overwhelmed business owner back to that person you
were when you first founded your business, with a vision, a dream,
and excitement for the prospect of the future.
Finally, we’ll review how to implement some of the core

components of the framework. The goal is for you to be able to
start this process by the time you finish reading this book, and start
that journey of rekindling your excitement and passion for your
business.
This might seem like a lot to undertake, but it really can be

summed up into 4 key steps:
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Step 1: Identify your business goals and measurements
Step 2: Map your existing business processes, and identify

areas for improvement (removing steps, automation, or delegation)
Step 3: Implement your identified improvements for streamlining

your processes, automate tasks, and delegate to existing or new
employees
Step 4: Monitor the measurements you identified in Step 1
The framework you’re about to walk through has radically

changed my life, and saved me from years of being overwhelmed
by minute tasks while leading both small and large teams. It has
also provided me the foundation with which to create a business.
Now, I want to share this with you, and it is my sincere hope that,
regardless of whether or not you choose to work with us, that this
book has a positive impact on your organization and your life.
Helping busy, overwhelmed business owners like you free

yourselves from your business is what we do on a daily basis. If
you read this book and decide you would like our help
implementing the strategies and framework discussed, book a call
with us here:
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/call
We’re here to help you!
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed

writing it, and that the framework contained inside helps you
improve your life as much as it has helped me improve mine.
To your success and freedom,
Tony
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Part 1 - Setting the Stage
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Chapter 1
Reality Check
How Did I Get Here?
I was sitting at my desk in an office in southern California. I

looked out over a vast array of open-office cubicles. Not a single
person of the several hundred sitting in the area was still at work.
Except for me. The sun was going down as it approached 7:30
(after having been working since 7AM), and I thought to myself,
“I can’t do this all by myself!”
I had taken a new position with a new company about six months
previously. I was going to be leading an IT service delivery contract
for a local power company (local is a relative term; they provide
power to over 15 million people). The first month or two was pretty
slow; I worked with one other transition team member to make over
40 hiring decisions, we began planning our warehouse build-out, but
the rubber hadn’t hit the road yet.
Then we brought over 40 people on board at once, and had to

coordinate their training across fifteen locations. We had half our
transition team pulled over to another project and were left with
too few people to lead the transition. Things were chaotic, but still
manageable.
Then we took over support fully from the previous vendor, and
the 70 hour weeks began…
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After a few months of doing everything to coordinate the team

myself, I realized that I needed to offload some of the work; I was
burning the candle at both ends. But how? It turns out that the key
lay in training I had taken nearly a decade ago, when I was working
for the then-largest company in the world, General Electric.
I needed to lean out my processes, identify waste, and take a

data-driven approach, applying many of the Lean Six Sigma
principles I had learned. I needed to identify which processes could
be automated and which team members could be trusted to take on
tasks I was currently doing myself. And I had to do all of this while
not losing sight of our team’s key performance indicators, since
we were bound by our contract to meet these measurements, or we
would get hit with a financial penalty.
By applying the Freedom Through Structure Framework I will

outline in this book, I was able to turn my 70-hour weeks into
reasonable work weeks where I could focus on the macro level of
running my own division of the business, and doubling the revenue
I was managing over the course of 3 years to around $8M annually.
I even had freed up enough of my time that I was helping other
clients and contracts, all while my 90+ person team continued to
service our client day after day with little to no intervention from
me.
Beware Of The Easy Way Out

A lot of gurus say, “I’ll teach you how to automate your
business!” People sell books or courses like “The 4-Hour Agency.”
You see a click-bait article like “5 Automations Your Business
Needs!” Here’s the problem...all of these people or pieces of content
know absolutely nothing about your individual business. They’re
offering a one-size-fits-all formula that they found worked for them
(or maybe didn’t even implement in their business) that doesn’t take
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into account your goals, processes, or team you have in place. Most
of these ideas work in very simple, straightforward businesses with
cookie-cutter workflows; however, if there is anything remotely
complicated or unique about your business, it just doesn’t work!
If you are struggling in your business and want to take back

your time and your life from it, these are great hooks, but don’t
address the individual nature of your business. In order to automate
your business, you first need to understand your processes
(customer journey, client fulfillment process, etc.). Every one of
these needs to be understood and mapped so that the flow is crystal
clear to you and your team.
A key component to your processes is understanding what data

needs to be gathered at what stages in the process. This is often
overlooked by many “gurus”, as well as business owners. How do
you know what data needs to be gathered when? By identifying your
business’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and applying it to your
processes.
Your business’s KPIs will be a function of many different

things. Some are standard items, like understanding how your
marketing costs are translating into revenue, average order value,
or close rate. Other KPIs will be based off your personal wants for
your business; some business owners will want to scale and grow
their revenue as large as they can make it, while others will want
to maintain a smaller client base that they can remain in close
contact with, because they like the personal feeling of the business.
Still other KPIs will depend on your client needs and wants; they
might be as simple as a customer satisfaction survey or net
promoter score, or you might be running a service-based business
that has contractual service level agreements to meet. As you can
see, each business is going to have its own metrics that are unique
to its model and owner.
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Once you’ve identified your business’s KPIs, you can then

determine how these metrics are calculated, ensure you’re properly
gathering data at each stage in your process, and then begin the
journey of leaning and optimizing your processes. Finally, you can
start the process of determining what actions you can delegate to
others, and what actions can be automated. This results in a business
plan that is custom tailored to you, rather than “5 Automations Your
Business Needs.” And that is why automation is the LAST thing you
should do, because it is one of the last steps in the process of freeing
yourself from the day-to-day duties of your business.
It might seem like you can just jump in and automate your
business without following all these steps beforehand. And maybe
if you’re the only person operating in your business, you’ve got all
the processes mapped out in your head and you can just jump
straight to automation. However, most decent-sized businesses
(even with just a few employees) don’t have the luxury of that
situation, and even sharp business owners will forget about a step
here and there.
The other big issue is that if you don’t spend this time up-front
to make sure that you have tracking and data points in place, and
you’ve automated or delegated portions of your business, how are
you going to know it’s running well? That’s why we have KPIs in
place to make sure you can quickly and easily measure the health
of your business without being as involved in it day-to-day.
Spending the time up front to do it the “right way” will pay

dividends in the long run. It will ultimately provide you and your
employees with far greater clarity about your business and its
operations, as well as providing a solid foundation of systems upon
which you can build. The Freedom Through Structure Framework
represents the meshing of the rigor and discipline applied to
corporate systems and processes with the flexibility and needs of
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a small business: distilling these systems and processes to their

most foundational points, and the elimination of all the fluff and
red tape that large corporations are known for.
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Chapter 2
Who This Book Is For
he method you’re about to learn about is the result of one of

T the most difficult times in my professional career, as I walked
you through earlier. However, whether I realized it at the time or
not, it actually allowed me to implement a collection of tools and
techniques I had learned over the course of more than a decade in
corporate America to accomplish what initially seemed
impossible.
There were a number of issues with the situation I had put myself
in. The first was that I was incredibly overworked. This may seem an
obvious issue with an obvious solution, but it was far from it,
unfortunately. By moving from a team of 1 to a team of 45 in such a
short space of time, there was no chance for growing pains to occur.
There was no opportunity for the usual delegation and parsing of
duties into an unintended spaghetti-like web. It all just fell squarely
onto my shoulders. Like a “good soldier”, I made it work...for
awhile…
This brings us to the first lesson, which is repeated so often in

the personal and business worlds: work smarter, not harder. I was
solving my problem through brute force for awhile because it was
a way that worked...until it didn’t.
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So many businesses have this issue, whether by design or by

accident through growth and time passing, where the owner has
taken on so many disparate and unconnected duties because they
used to do it, or because they had no one else to. Instead of just
letting duties pile on, it’s time to take a step back and look at what
you’re doing and why, and if it’s really the best way for your
business to be operating.
The second lesson I learned: chaos breeds more chaos. If the

leader doesn’t understand with incredible clarity what is supposed
to be happening in an organization and why, the likelihood of the
employees knowing is incredibly slim. It’s easy to become
overwhelmed with the different functions and duties required in a
business, especially a small business where roles are often shared
and mixed.
There are two ways to make progress forward from a situation

like this, where you’re in over your head. You can either struggle
through it and learn by trial and error, or you can pay an expert
who’s already been through it to guide you through the situation.
Intentionally or not, I chose the former. However, it would provide
the foundation for the Freedom Through Structure Framework that
you see in this book today, so at least some good came out of it.
As the months went by, and I applied what would later turn
into the Freedom Through Structure Framework, my personal
workload began to decrease due to systemizing a large number of
these processes, then entrusting automation and key individuals to
carry out the duties I once had to do entirely myself. I had clawed
my way back down to 40 hours per week, and eventually had
offloaded enough that I could pull my head out of the weeds, and
truly start to lead the organization.
The more important gain I experienced, though, is that my

work no longer dominated my life. I began to have time again to
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exercise. My diet slowly improved. While I hadn’t put on a large

amount of weight during this time (as you hear about in a lot of
these stories), I did begin to lean out again (I had put on some
weight).
If you are feeling overwhelmed in your business with the

spider web it’s become, you are overloaded with small tasks and
minutiae, need help navigating your processes to gain clarity, or
even just need help applying a methodology to give you more data-
driven oversight of your company, then this framework and book
are exactly what you need. What I am going to teach you in the
coming pages is how to untangle your business and understand it
with clarity. I am going to teach you how to disconnect yourself
from the myriad tasks and distractions that can overwhelm a
business owner. I am also going to teach you how to drive your
decisions with data from your business, and use that data to give
you quick and easy oversight of your business. Following these
steps will give you the freedom you want and deserve.
Self Assessment
Before we go on, let’s check about the current state of your
business and your life. Rank each statement from 1-5, with 1 being
“not at all accurate”, and 5 being “very accurate.” Once completed,
total up your personal rating scores, and use the assessment rating
to determine next steps.
Check-in Statement Personal

Rating
I am currently happy with my work-life

balance
I am able to spend enough time with my

family
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I am able to pay enough attention to my

personal health (diet, fitness, etc.)
I enjoy working in my business
I find my work fulfilling and enjoyable
The current state of my business is what I

dreamt of when I first started it
I am able to take 3-4 at least week-long

vacations per year, completely unplugged
from my business
My business runs efficiently, with little to

no unnecessary waste in our processes
I spend less than five hours per week on

day-to-day tasks with little to no thought
involved
Tally Your Score
What Your Score Really Means

A score of 9-20 means that the fundamentals are missing.
When you started your business, you undoubtedly had a dream and
a vision. Instead, now you’re operating day-to-day and not fully
realizing that vision.
Through the course of this book, I will walk you through the steps
you need to take in order to get you out of your day-to-day grind, help
you realize your vision, and give you the time back to be able to spend
it with your family and on your health. All while not sacrificing your
business!
A score of 21-33 means that you’ve got some balance and some
of the steps in place, but you still need improvement. This likely
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means a disconnect in one of a few areas: eliminating process waste,

and automation or delegation. You might still have some employees
operating, but not as well as they could. You might also need some
help in deciding what and how to automate some tasks. This book
will help you on that journey through those specific sections.
A score of 34-45 means that you are well along your journey
towards freedom from your business. The most specific and
actionable steps for your situation are to enable you to take more
of a step back from your business. Focusing on implementing key
performance indicators and how to quickly and easily monitor
them is likely the best use of your time, given the current stage of
your business.
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Chapter 3
Adaptability Is The Key
hat’s the difference between a freelancer (even a freelancer

W with an LLC) and a business owner? A freelancer is doing
all the work themselves, whereas a business owner is running an
organization of multiple people with specific roles and
responsibilities. Some people might be in the transition from
freelancer to business owner, where they have others working for
them, but are still doing part of the fulfillment work themselves.
Regardless of where you lie on this scale, the principles and
concepts discussed will help you move yourself further towards
the business owner end of your journey.
By following the Freedom Through Structure Framework laid out

in this book, you will be in the advantageous position of not just
following a “quick fix productivity tip”, but being able to analyze and
understand your business processes. With this understanding, you
will be able to adapt your process to any needed changes in workflow
and introduce new systems if necessary. If you want to introduce a
new product or process with a different workflow, following this
methodology will enable you to introduce this product or process into
your business without creating chaos.
I’ve found myself personally in the situation in my own

business where I wasn’t properly following this framework. I tried
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to just implement some automations without really understanding all

the data I needed to gather or the process I was trying to implement.
As a result, I found myself going back to the automations again and
again, having to change them slightly, gather more data throughout
the process, and eventually getting to the point where I had the right
automation in place. Had I just spent the time to outline everything
up front, I could have saved myself a lot of grief.
I also made the mistake of delegating before I was ready. I didn’t

have a great core product in place at first, nor did I have an
established, working sales process. I brought on a sales closer, who
took over 40 calls and made 0 sales. Why? Because I didn’t have the
proper product and sales process in place for him. It wasn’t his fault
he didn’t make any sales; it was mine. I tried to delegate something
that didn’t truly have a process in place, and it greatly slowed down
the launch of my business.
The Freedom Through Structure Framework also provides you

with great clarity about what’s happening in your business. People so
often get caught up in the day-to-day operations of the business and
the minute tasks that they rarely take the time to understand the
overall flow of data, customers, etc., through their business. This
clarity will help when bringing on new employees and training them,
scoping and defining job requirements, and better fuel ideas you
might have for your business and how these new ideas would fit into
your existing workflow.
Finally, having this level of clarity and insight into your business
will give you the peace of mind to be able to step out of your business
day-to-day. Many business owners have a hard time giving up their
daily responsibilities because they “want to make sure it gets done
right”. By following all the steps in this methodology, including
careful automation and testing, setting your employees up for success,
and monitoring your business’s key performance indicators to ensure
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your business is performing as expected, you can pull back knowing

that the job will get done how you expect it to, and will be able to
detect any deviations from this expectation through careful
monitoring.
Having this flexibility to adapt to changes in your business,

clarity of the operations of your business, and peace of mind that
the business will be able to operate without your daily involvement
will give you several major benefits and advantages over other
business owners. It will allow you to adapt easily to changes in the
marketplace, reduce your workload and relieve your stress, and let
you determine where your time is best spent to move towards your
business goals.
Self Assessment
Next, let’s talk about the state of operations within your business.
Rank each statement from 1-5, with 1 being “not at all accurate”, and
5 being “very accurate.” Once completed, total up your personal
rating scores, and use the assessment rating to determine next steps.

Rating
I have clarity of all tasks and processes

currently operating within my business,
regardless of whether I’m the one
implementing those tasks or not
I have documentation of all processes and

tasks to give to my employees
My employees and I never enter

information from one system into another
My employees and I never have to conduct

the same task repeatedly
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My employees consistently perform at a

very high level
I have clarity of how to measure the

success or failure of all operations within
my business quickly and easily
My employees understand the expectations

of them, and can easily have an
understanding of how they are performing
against those expectations
I frequently communicate with my

employees about their performance
I frequently seek suggestions from my

employees on how to improve my business
Tally Your Score

A score of 9-20 means that chaos is keeping you from realizing
your full potential as a business and a business owner. You need to
take a hard look at how to implement structure and standardization
within your organization in order to be able to succeed as a business,
and accomplish your goal as an owner of being able to take a step
back to reclaim your time and your life.
A score of 21-33 means that you’ve started to bring some

semblance of order to your business. You’ve likely got a few easy
automations in place, and have a few key items documented. There
are two ways to utilize the steps outlined in this book to help you
take the next steps in your business:
The first next step to take your operations to the next level will be
to identify those more difficult tasks to automate or delegate, and take
the time to work on those. You got the easy ones out of the way
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already, and likely left these hanging around because of their

difficulty.
The other major next step for your business is to begin to establish
order at a higher level. You might have your day-to-day processes
ironed out fairly well, but setting expectations for employees and
showing them how to monitor their own progress and mastery is
important.
A score of 34-45 means that your business is operating fairly

efficiently already. Your time reading this book is best spent in two
key areas:
The first area of focus will, similar to last chapter, be on your key
performance indicators, and implementing incredibly quick and easy
monitoring of the health of your business.
The second main focus area will be on developing a long-term

employee engagement strategy. Keeping your employees focused
and happy, as well as continuing to help them develop mastery of new
skills, is what will help you retain your high performers long-term.
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Chapter 4
Processes: The Cornerstone of

Freedom
W e live in a culture of instant gratification. People want the

result, but don’t want to put in a lot of effort to get it. This
concept applies just the same to business automation as it does to
everything else in life. The rise of articles like “5 Automations
Your Business Can’t Live Without” and “Best Task Management
Software of 2021” heralds this. They promote putting the cart
before the horse, because there are steps of business understanding
that are skipped over and ignored, by these articles and many
business owners alike.
Many gurus also promote a guide to setting up a business where

you only work 2-4 hours per week. In these books, they outline a
format they may or may not have used to run their business, but this
leaves little-to-no room for flexibility. So, their approach might work
if you follow it 100%, set your business up in that manner, and never
deviate for any reason.
How many times have you seen a business that’s 100% cookie
cutter, though? Let me tell you...I’ve never seen one. Every business
will have its own quirks and process differences. If anyone tells you
to follow a one-size-fits-all process, then you’re essentially being told
to copy their business...and now, what makes your business unique
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and differentiated? Unique is good! Differentiation is good! It just

means that you need to have an understanding of your unique business
process flow.
The most important step in the Freedom Through Structure

Framework is the process understanding and mapping. This is where
you dig deep into the workings of your business to understand each
of your processes necessary to acquire and fulfill customers. At first
glance, many processes are similar, but the devil is always in the
details, and this is where you will find many of these unique features
and characteristics.
Spending the time to understand your processes will give you far
more insight into your business operations. Being caught up in the
day-to-day of operational tasks means that it’s rare to take a step back
to understand the why. One of the main insights that people gain
during this exercise is asking, “Why the heck do we do it that way?”
This is a key insight because it’s incredibly important before you

either automate or delegate to have a clean, lean process. I’ve seen
situations where people have 2-3 automations in place to do just one
step because of an old system they used to use, and no one ever
bothered to figure out why they were doing what they were doing.
This makes it so much more difficult to troubleshoot any issues that
occur, make any process or system changes in the future, or even just
understand what’s happening.
The next advantage to process mapping is that you will often

discover additional steps that can be either automated or delegated.
Even if you don’t understand how to do the automations personally,
it’s important to see that you do have a need for a transfer of
information/moving to the next step in the process, but that there’s no
need for a human touch in the process. Often, the reason that there is
a human touch on steps like that is because no one has looked to try
to find a better way.
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Finally, process understanding and mapping will give your

employees a much clearer picture of both the required steps as well
as the ultimate outcome, and how they fit into that picture. This
level of insight can make delegation a much easier process. It will
not only show them where they fit into the process, but will also
allow room for your employees to express their creativity and
mastery. By giving them this understanding as a base, an employee’s
level of competency (assuming you hired the right person) will start
at your level, and then they can build on it from there by suggesting
improvements in efficiency or customer experience.
Question 1: Do I really need this level of formality in my

small business?
A common question I get is whether or not this is really necessary
in a small business. There is a notorious image that corporate rigidity
is evil...It feels too formal, too detailed and rigid for businesses of this
scale, and it’s only for large corporations.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. There are a lot
of small businesses that have had great success implementing these
concepts. Whether they intended to or not, this is how they were able
to scale and be successful at the level they are. That’s why we take
the best and leave the rest! We pull out the best concepts from these
methodologies implemented by large corporations, but leave behind
the red tape and overly complicated steps to arrive at a system that is
flexible and adaptable for a small business.
Question 2: Can I really trust anyone but myself to do it

all? I’ve had awful experiences giving parts of my
business process to others.
This again is a very common issue that I see. Business owners
have tried to outsource or delegate key functions, and have had
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terrible experiences with it.
While I won’t say this is true 100% of the time, in most cases, it
can be overcome by following a standard methodology and careful
selection of employees/service providers/VAs. Diligence for
communicating the process they’re expected to follow and steps
follows that selection. Suffice to say that the vast majority of the time,
these bad experiences can be overcome, and you can successfully
offload your tasks. We will walk through this in great detail later in
this book.
Question 3: Customer service and flexibility are the

cornerstone of my business. Will standardization of
processes eliminate this, and I’ll lose my edge?
Not at all! Standardization of processes needs to be approached
by hiring the right people (A players). If you hire a person who only
follows processes and doesn’t deviate in the slightest, then you will
indeed have issues. But by hiring an A player, you’re hiring a person
who understands the process and outcome necessary, and that person
will know when to follow a process, and when to deviate from it to
help a customer. Putting the right people in place will help you solve
this problem. You can also work to solve this by giving your excellent
team members flexible sets of options to use when approaching sales
or customer service, to help them more easily resolve a situation on
their own to a customer’s satisfaction.
Self Assessment
Next, let’s talk about the state of your processes and
automation. Rank each statement from 1-5, with 1 being “not at all
accurate”, and 5 being “very accurate.” Once completed, total up
your personal rating scores, and use the assessment rating to
determine next steps.
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Tony Rudd

Rating
I have established standard processes

within my business
I have documented the processes used to

operate my business
I have identified any steps that might be

considered wasteful within processes
I have identified steps within processes that

can be automated
I have conducted the automation of the

identified steps
I have identified steps within processes that

can be delegated
I have conducted the delegation of the

identified steps
I am happy with all of the daily tasks I am

conducting, and would like the current
state of my work to be the future state

A score of 8-18 means that you need to focus on the basics of
your processes first. Spending time understanding your processes,
all required steps, and identifying waste are the first steps you will
need to focus on. This is a prerequisite for being able to move into
automation and delegation...offloading a broken process will just
make things worse.
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A score of 19-27 means that you are on your way to having

established processes and a smoothly running business. Focusing
on the implementation of automation and delegation is the likely
next step. However - if you’ve started the automation and
delegation without understanding the process...it’s time to pump
the brakes and go back!
A score of 28-40 means that you are well on your way to working
yourself out of the daily operations of your business. Keep moving
forward and continuing to free up your time, and focus on completing
the offloading process, then moving into the KPI tracking and
monitoring phase.
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Chapter 5
Beware of Promises That Seem

Too Good To Be True
A s you can see from the previous chapter, process mapping

forms the foundation of all the work you will do in order to
free yourself from your business. At the same time, it’s the most
often overlooked by many business owners. By jumping straight
into automation and delegation without this step, as so many
articles and gurus propose, you greatly limit the potential of your
business and the benefits you can experience, both financially and
in terms of time freedom.
Many business owners (maybe even you!) have tried to jump

straight to automation without taking the proper time to understand
their business processes. As a result, they run into a situation where
they don’t have clearly defined needs, it doesn’t gain what they hoped
it would, or it creates even more of a mess than not automating the
process. In the Freedom Through Structure Framework, we prevent
this by spending the time up-front to establish your automation needs
through process mapping.
The other great benefit of mapping your processes first is that it

will become much clearer how to design your automations. Instead
of sitting there and wondering what the trigger is, and what the
ensuing actions are, it’s clearly spelled out by the steps in the process.
26
This makes it so that even people who are a bit less tech-savvy can at
the very least implement some basic automations in their business.
The next common mistake I see while people are trying to free
themselves from their business is that they try to delegate a task or
portion of a process, and the person they delegate to does not perform
to their expectations. Then, the business owner has to take the tasks
back on themselves or otherwise endure the chaos that results. In
addition, they have to deal with the HR nightmare that ensues from
whether or not to keep the person on staff. This tends to lead to
thoughts of “I can’t trust anyone but myself!”
There are two main reasons for this, and while it may seem harsh,
it’s true: either you hired the wrong person or you didn’t teach them
properly. Both of those issues lie with the business owner, not the
employee! What we get into here is a bit of what we will call “radical
responsibility.” As the business owner, you are responsible for all
facets of your business. It is your responsibility, as the business
owner, to hire the right people for the job and then be crystal clear
about how they need to do their job. If you are successful in both of
those areas, you will have incredible, high-functioning employees
that you don’t have to worry about or micromanage.
We address both hiring and how to offload tasks as part of the

delegation portion of the Freedom Through Structure Framework,
though fair warning: creating documentation is for the most part a
science, but hiring is a bit of an art. It can be distilled down to what
to look for and not look for, but things like “character” and
“personality” are difficult to measure.
My second warning is that with hiring, no one will get it right

100% of the time. You can get really good, but not perfect. I’ve hired
hundreds of people through the course of my career, and while I
became pretty good at it over the years, I made hiring mistakes as
well.
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Tony Rudd
The worst part about hiring mistakes is that with other issues, like
bad training or a broken automation, you can go back to easily correct
the mistake. With an incorrect hiring decision, correcting this kind of
mistake could involve having to let that person go, or that they will
quickly quit. By making that incorrect hiring decision, you will most
likely negatively affect that person’s life. As a result, you must take
your time with these decisions and avoid snap judgements.
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Part 2 - The Freedom

Through Structure
Framework
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Tony Rudd
Chapter 6
Bringing a Dose of Corporate to

Small Businesses
L arge corporations have a long history of creating processes.

Can you imagine trying to run a large manufacturing plant
without having utmost clarity on how to manufacture your core
product? This requires clear instructions, documentation,
processes, and the list goes on.
Many large corporations have project and program

management methodologies which entail established frameworks
for implementing projects within their environments. They have
specific phase gates, huge amounts of documentation required via
templates, control meetings, and more. There are so many
requirements that it definitely feels like it falls into the “excessive
red tape” category to me. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t
borrow some of the best pieces, and discard the annoying ones!
Toyota has a long history of process discipline and streamlining.

With the implementation of its Kaizen production system in the
1960s, Toyota quickly became known for its efficiency, which
translated into huge cost savings for the company. Toyota has since
been studied by many other large corporations to understand how
Kaizen principles were successfully implemented in the company.
Toyota fosters a culture of continuous improvement from assembly
30
line workers to the CEO, accepting input and ideas from all levels of
the organization.
General Electric (GE) was one of the companies that studied

the Kaizen methodologies of Toyota. The people who went to
study this came back with a number of learnings. GE had also
adopted Six Sigma methodologies from Motorola, which focused
on driving out issues and waste through data analysis. These
principles would be combined into what they dubbed the “Lean
Six Sigma” program (which is where I learned some of the tools
and concepts discussed in this book). GE would go on to become
renowned for its Lean Six Sigma events, eliminating large amounts
of waste in production processes and achieving huge cost savings
for the company.
What was a bit less publicized was that these concepts were
also applied to different areas of the business, also to great effect.
Working in their IT organization, we used similar concepts to
reduce the amounts of service requests received by our help desk,
for example. These concepts, while born in manufacturing, can
extend everywhere, even into the digital world as well.
Taking these core concepts of leaning processes and data-driven

decision making, while removing the red tape and extraneous steps,
to help a small business function is the core foundation for this book.
Some people have tried to write about making your small business
function well in the past, or how to help busy business owners, but
tend to focus more on task management, delegation, and automation
without taking the holistic business view offered by these concepts.
Many small business owners haven’t had exposure to these

concepts, and don’t realize that it’s possible, that there is a more
thorough and sustainable approach to optimizing their businesses.
That is why I’ve written this book, and what I’m here to change.
The great angle is that we can take the most essential and best core
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components of these methodologies, discard the steps that don’t

add value to small businesses, and optimize to get your business
running like a well-oiled machine.
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Chapter 7
The Six Steps to Freedom
The Freedom Through Structure Framework
T his framework came about as a result of years of trial and

error, and having to figure things out on my own. I’m
outlining it here so you don’t have to go through the same pain that
I did! It consists of the following six steps:
1. Goal Setting
2. Identification of Key Performance Indicators
3. Process Mapping
4. Automation
5. Delegation
6. Monitoring
When implemented properly, these steps will provide the basis

for freeing yourself from your business. Now, let’s look at each
step in more detail.
Goal Setting
First, we need to dive into your personal business goals. Some
of these will be metrics-based, and some will be less easily
quantifiable goals. SMART goals are a common way to frame
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metrics-based goals in business. This common goal framework states

that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and
Time-bound. The goals that can’t be easily quantified usually revolve
more around the structure of the business that you want to create,
rather than a specific measurement.
Your metrics-based personal goals will usually be much more

high-level than your KPIs. No one comes into a business and says,
“It’s my goal to build a business with a 3x ROAS.” Usually these
metrics will revolve around revenue and/or profit, or the number
of people/clients you want to help.
The less quantifiable goals will tend to be more around how

you want to structure your business around your lifestyle and
personal values. One example is that as a coach, you may not want
to build a behemoth of a business, but want to be involved
individually with each of your clients, or at least your key clients.
Another example would be that you want to ensure that all of your
employees are located in your country rather than outsourcing to a
low-cost area like India or Philippines. These are personal choices
and goals that will factor into how you later map your processes,
as well as how you conduct your outsourcing and delegation.
There are a number of excellent goal-setting books on the

market. If you are struggling with this portion, here are a few
excellent reads in the genre. Note that not all of these are 100%
business-focused, since your goals might be both business and
personal/lifestyle in scope.
 The Art of Setting Smart Goals by Anisa Marku

 Creating Your Best Life by Caroline Miller
 The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte
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Key Performance Indicators

The reason we introduce key performance indicators (KPIs)
now is because it is essential to make sure you are capturing the
right data throughout your processes. If you don’t know what data
you want to see to monitor your business’s performance, then you
don’t know what data you need to gather during the process. By
constructing or modifying your processes with the end in mind,
you can ensure that we have a seamless flow, and aren’t coming
back to modify processes or add data fields later.
There are entire books written about KPIs. Companies can

spend months or even years developing their KPIs, only to change
them at a moment’s notice due to a change in leadership, the
market, or other factors. An important thing to keep in mind is that,
while you may establish a set of KPIs now, you need to not blindly
follow them, and be flexible as the future may change your plans
of how you run your business.
When you look at KPIs, it’s important to think about them in

three steps:
1. Understanding the definition of the KPI

2. Understanding how to calculate the KPI
3. Determining where the data for this KPI is stored and
how it is gathered
To start, here’s a list of common KPIs:
 Financial Metrics
 Revenue
 Expenses
 Expense categories
 Margins
 Gross Margin
 Operating Margin
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Tony Rudd
 Net Profit Margin

 Customer Metrics
 Customer Acquisition Cost
 Customer Satisfaction/Net Promoter Score
 Customer Retention
 Qualified Leads Per Month
 Conversion Rate
 Myriad Digital Marketing Metrics
 Return on Ad Spend
 Website Traffic
 Click-Through Rate
 Organizational Metrics
 Project Timeline Adherence
 Internal Fulfillment Goals/Operating Agreements
 Employee Satisfaction
Note that this is not an inexhaustible list; you can always find
another, more detailed metric. However, this is enough to get you
started with viewing your business as a data machine. For detailed
information about KPIs, how to calculate them, and what they
measure, check out the KPI Reference Guide that you got with this
book!
For now, identify your main KPIs you believe are important to
run your business, and catalog all the necessary data points so that
as you begin to map your processes, you’ll ensure you aren’t
missing anything.
Process Mapping
To me, this is the most overlooked and most important step to
freeing yourself from your business. Your process maps will form
the foundation for determining what you can delegate and what
you can automate.
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Begin this journey by identifying all of your key processes.

Examples include:
 Customer Journey (there could be more than one if you

have multiple entry points or products)
 Customer Onboarding (again, could depend upon product)
 Ongoing Fulfillment
Now that you’ve identified your core business processes, you

need to map them by identifying the key steps one by one. This
will be explained in more detail later.
Finally, as you complete the mapping, you need to ask yourself

three main questions:
1. Is this step 100% necessary for the process? (“Lean”

your process out)
2. Does this step need to be done by a human?
3. If I’m doing this step, do I really need to do this step?
(Hint: the answer is probably no)
Automation
Automation is probably the most daunting piece of the process
for many, and rightfully so, since automation can seem easy on the
surface, but there are often tricky minutiae that surface in order to
create a proper working integration between two systems. As a
result, it can sometimes take a lot of testing and troubleshooting to
get these stood up and working.
However, the benefits to adding automations to your business can

be incredible. Something like an email follow-up sequence can
generate far more leads than you would otherwise have. Follow-up
sequences should be quite lengthy, as only about 15% of people who
will purchase a high-ticket item are ready to purchase it in the first 90
days. Having a short follow-up sequence (or none at all) could leave
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Tony Rudd
85% of potential customers on the table!
The benefits can also be seen in productivity of your

employees. In a modern digital business, gone are the days of
people manually keying data from one system into another. Some
systems allow for direct integrations between other common,
popular systems. However, if they don’t, a tool like Zapier can be
the glue that holds it all together. The entire concept of Zapier is
that if something occurs in system 1, take some of that data and
take an action in system 2. So, for example, let’s say that a lead
books a call with you in your scheduling software. That lead could
then get automatically added to your customer relationship
management software to track their buying interest. Automations
can be far more complicated than that, but at its core, they follow
the formula “If X happens, then do Y.”
Delegation
There are many steps that go into delegating, but your team is
a fundamental component to your business. Without them, there’s
no business! Or at least, it doesn’t run without your input. The
steps I tend to follow when filling out a team are as follows:
1. Identification of roles and responsibilities - Ensuring

you have the right types of team members on board is
the first step towards success (using your process maps
you previously created as a base)
2. Hiring - Hiring the right people to then fill the roles is
essential. Not everyone will be an A player, but you
want as many A players as possible, and the rest should
be B players. If you have a C, D, or F player...something
went awry in the process
3. Standard Operating Procedures - You now have to
actually delegate tasks to your employees, now that you
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have employees. Doing a thorough job of outlining job

responsibilities with as many Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs) as possible is essential to their (and
your) success
4. Employee Engagement - Once you have your
employees actively performing their work, it’s
important to keep an open line of communication, and
foster a culture where people enjoy working and want
to work. This doesn’t mean you have to be friends with
everyone, but creating a culture of openness and
transparency is essential
Monitoring
When you’ve offloaded a lot of your daily tasks to others, it
can be a bit troubling since you aren’t sure of the state of your
business when you’re no longer actively experiencing or involved
in many of the tasks. Good thing we identified our Key
Performance Indicators earlier on! Monitoring of those metrics, in
addition to employee communication, is the key to keeping the
cadence of your business.
If you have historical data to establish expectations and

baselines for these metrics, great! Otherwise, spend the first few
months getting adjusted to where these metrics will lie is
important, and then monitor for large changes or deviations to
indicate that something is going either very well or very awry in
your business.
______________
“Make discipline your lifestyle. Discipline is not a one-time

event. Self-discipline is like building your muscle. It’s like going
to the gym. You can not go to the gym today and build your
muscle. You should get a program and go slowly by slowly. That’s
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Tony Rudd
the way to build your muscle and that’s the way you can have
discipline.” - Eliud Kipchoge, marathon world record holder.
At its core, following the Freedom Through Structure

Framework is the key to creating a sustainable, functioning
business. It’s important not to get “shiny object syndrome” and try
to jump around or shortcut, as each of these steps will build upon
each other as you progress through the framework. Following
these six steps sequentially and diligently, with self-discipline, will
be your ticket to freedom.
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Chapter 8
The Art and Science of Employees

and Delegation
he one core piece of this methodology that doesn’t have too

T many roots in Lean or Six Sigma methodologies is how to
manage people. However, as a business owner, people are the
foundation of your business, and so this skill is essential. As a
result, I’ve devoted an entire chapter to going from no employees
to delegation to creating a company culture where people want to
work.
Identification of Roles and Responsibilities

In identifying all steps that you plan to delegate during the process
mapping phase, you have to now decide how these should be split
into roles. Sometimes this is fairly easy and obvious, but other times
can be quite challenging. Luckily, in the modern small business world
we operate in, more flexible employment arrangements like Virtual
Assistants (VAs) and flexible sales closers are prevalent. This can
make it significantly easier than having to focus exclusively on full-
time employees.
You need to begin by deciding which tasks you’ve chosen to

delegate will fall into which role (if there are multiple roles).
Sometimes you’re just looking at bringing on a sales closer.
Sometimes you need a collection of VAs for administrative items
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Tony Rudd
across many different functional areas. While there aren’t hard-and-

fast rules on how to accomplish this breakdown, the general rule I try
to follow is that tasks from different functions or departments (HR,
accounting, sales, etc.) should not fall into the same role. If you don’t
have enough tasks in that area to fill out a full time employee’s time,
look at hiring a VA or service provider to handle that area. Find
people who are good at what they do in each individual area instead
of finding a generalist who does everything mediocre.
Hiring
If you don’t already have employees in place and are looking
to hire, there are myriad hiring matrices that can be used, or
methods for selecting employees, but in my experience (having
conducted over 400 interviews personally), the biggest attribute to
look for in anyone is their personality and character. Ensuring they
will be a good fit for your team and represent the values of your
company well is a skill that cannot be taught.
Here are the four main things I look to assess/remember during

an interview:
1. Experience - Use the candidate’s resume only to assess

whether you should interview them or not, and possibly
for discussion points/searching for red flags. Do not
hire someone solely based off their resume
2. Technical Skill - I tend to ask low-to-medium
difficulty questions in this area, and judge more based
on their apparent knowledge and thought process,
rather than the exact answer that they give. Remember
that your goal is to assess their knowledge of the
particular domain you’re hiring them for, not for them
to give you the exact answer you were looking for or
expecting.
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3. Behavior - Ask situational questions that start with

something like, “Tell me about a time when…” A
couple of notes about these types of questions:
a) If they have a customer-facing role, I always like to ask
something to the effect of, “Tell me about a time when
you dealt with a difficult customer, and how you were
still able to give them a positive outcome from the
situation.”
b) Wording of your interview questions, especially in the
behavioral portion, is very important. I made the
mistake of asking a question along the lines of “What
does customer service mean to you?” until I got the
simple answer, “Everything!” I then realized I needed
to reword the question to the effect of, “What
characteristics of your personality or work style do you
believe help you provide good customer service?” This
completely changed the types of answers I received,
because it gave me the opportunity to see not just what
they felt was important about customer service, but also
how they felt their abilities helped them perform in that
capacity
4. Red Flags - Be careful of any red flags you notice
during the interview process. This includes, but is not
limited to:
a) Everything negative in jobs or life is not their fault.
This is going to translate into their work as well, and
shows a lack of personal accountability. This is an
automatic disqualifier for me.
b) Excessive job hopping. While job hopping once, or
maybe even twice, can be ok if you ask for their
reasoning and it seems to make sense. If it happens over
and over again, there’s a reason. Whether it’s a
personality or performance issue, beware.
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Tony Rudd
When finding a VA, you can be a bit less picky. They should
still be a good fit, but the interview process doesn’t need to be
nearly as rigorous. You can find a VA, or even just a person to do
a particular task that you can’t/don’t want to do, easily. You can
ask around on social networking platforms or just search on sites
like Upwork. With Upwork, pay careful attention to ratings and
comments.
Service providers are a bit trickier than VAs, and there are lots
of snake oil salesmen out there. “Interview” them, ensure their
values are in alignment with theirs, and do your best to verify their
ability to perform what they say they can. Above all, ask for
references, with the multitude of options available.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Once you have your team member in place, now comes the
delegation process. Luckily, we mapped out your business processes
previously in the framework, so there’s the beginning of your
documentation to get them up to speed! For each step in the process,
it should be supplemented with a document or video outlining step-
by-step how you accomplish a given task. A Word document will
usually suffice, but if you’re able to, a video where you walk through
a process on your screen and narrate it as you go along is an excellent
way to transition your knowledge, while also being easier to assemble
than a Word document with screenshots. A tool like Loom can be
used to quickly and easily accomplish this. Some of the videos that
I’ve made that will accompany this book were shot with Loom.
Employee Engagement
Once you are no longer the main point of operations within your
organization, it’s incredibly important to keep your finger on the
pulse of your business. The first way you do this is with monitoring
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the analytical health of your business. The second is through

consistent employee engagement. Remember that you, as the owner,
will set the tone for the culture of your business.
Here are a couple of statistics to show you why, after a very

analytical and data/process-oriented book, we’re going to discuss the
“softer” skill of employee engagement. According to Hubspot, 69%
of employees would work harder if they were better appreciated.
According to Smarp, companies with high employee engagement are
22% more profitable, and customer retention rates are 18% higher.
It’s also just a good thing to do as a person; engaged employees are
happier employees, and who doesn’t want to make people happier?
But as you can see, these “soft” skills can truly pay hard dividends for
your business.
As your team grows, and you talk to each individual less

frequently, the weight of each conversation, each moment with them,
increases. Your people are the cornerstone of your organization. It
makes financial sense to consistently treat your employees well and
engage with them; but it also makes you a better human being at the
same time.
The first key to employee engagement is communication.

Holding regular sessions with your employees for them to
communicate in both directions is crucial. Employees want to know
what’s going on in the business, and they also want to be heard about
how things are going and have a forum to voice their issues.
Depending on the size of your organization, these forums may be
more or less formal, but that makes them no less important. Whether
you do these types of sessions together or separate them, whether you
do them with individuals or as a group, these are all decisions you
need to make. The important thing is that they happen.
The second facet of engagement is transparency. This doesn’t

mean you have to tell your employees absolutely everything; it just
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Tony Rudd
means that you tell them what you’re able to and keep them informed,
and if you don’t want to tell them something, don’t dodge around it.
Be polite but upfront that it’s not appropriate to discuss with them, at
least at the time of the conversation.
Finally, making your employees feel like they’re a part of

something bigger is a common and proven strategy. Some of this can
be by showing how the company as a whole is doing, and translating
that via metrics to individual departments and their contributions.
This can also be through a company mission, and positive change that
your company has been able to affect. It could even be more direct,
by taking time out of the work day for volunteering (if it’s not a purely
digital business, of course).
There are many other detail-oriented strategies that can

surround employee engagement, but starting with these three
simple strategies can get you a long way towards happy, engaged
employees. If you have successfully engaged with your
employees, but also keep your hands out of your day-to-day tasks
that you used to handle, then a level of trust will begin to form.
One of the most moving comments I received was during my
second year managing a team. To this day, I don’t know who wrote
it (because of the anonymized feedback system), but it simply
stated, “Tony is my leader; I trust him and he trusts me.” I have
never been prouder of any piece of feedback I have received than
this. As a result, this is what I strive for with all of my teams, and
have tried to convey here how that can be replicated.
Putting It All Together

You have to set your employees up for success. In many cases,
the failure of an employee is actually the failure of their manager.
Improper training, hiring the wrong person for the job, or lack of
clarity on job duties can all lead to poor employee performance, but
46
is really due to shoddy management.
So do yourself a favor. Set your employees up for success by

hiring the right people, training them well, and then giving them the
room to make a difference in your business. You might be surprised
by the results. Some business owners even find that others end up
doing it better than they did, since an employee can take the owner’s
competency and process as a baseline, and then improve upon it.
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Tony Rudd
Part 3 - Pull Yourself Out

of Your Business
48
Chapter 9
Process Mapping
nce you’ve identified your key metrics that will drive your
O business, you need to take a hard look at your processes.
What is the journey of a customer from lead to sale closure? Once
you close a sale, how do you hand off to fulfillment? What is your
onboarding process for clients? What is your ongoing fulfillment
process, if it applies to you?
Process mapping at its most basic is what you really need to

get started here. Using an online tool like LucidChart is an easy
way to get started quickly. If you’ve never dealt with process
mapping before, you can find a quick video tutorial in the “How
To Get More Help” section of the book. Essentially, you need to
break down each of the individual steps involved in each process,
one by one (no boxes that say “Do X, Y, and Z!”), establish who
is completing the step, and finally whatever decisions need to be
made as a part of the process (Did the customer purchase the
product? If yes, follow this path; if not, follow this other path).
Here’s an example of a bare-bones process map for a customer

journey. In this map, the customer clicks on an ad and is taken to a
webinar. They either purchase the product at the end of the webinar,
in which case the team contacts to set up a sales call for an upsell. If
not, the team follows up with the potential customer to try to convince
them towards purchase.
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Tony Rudd
The individual steps mentioned above are in the square boxes,

who is completing the step is shown on the left side via the “swim
lanes”, and the purchase and call booking decisions are indicated
by the diamonds.
Once you’ve identified your current state, you need to ensure

that you’re doing everything for a reason! Is there an opportunity
to reduce the number of steps in the process, regardless of who or
what is doing it? Analyzing the process for options to eliminate or
consolidate steps is an absolute must before trying to teach anyone
else or automating steps in the process. That’s why we do all of
this pre-work...if you try to automate a process that is broken or
doesn’t make sense, you’re just wasting your time and will
overcomplicate or possibly even break your process if you
automate without understanding and optimizing it.
Leaning Your Processes

The concept of process Lean is all about reducing waste, and
is something I’ve employed throughout my career. For example, at
a previous role, my team delivering IT services was required to
abide by strict inventory control measures (it was customer-owned
inventory, after all!), and, having 20 inventory hubs, this
50
necessitated use of an inventory management system as well as

having processes surrounding it.
We didn’t have clear requirements when we initially began the

program several years previous, and were using a system that didn’t
really meet our needs. It didn’t offer the checks and balances we later
discovered we needed, as well as the ability to transfer from our
warehouse to a hub, then give to a customer. It was either in the
system or out. As a result, we had to utilize a janky system involving
paper forms and email approvals to circumvent the shortcomings of
the system.
When our annual renewal for the software was coming up, we
decided it was time for a change. We mapped out our current process
(flaws and all) and identified who was responsible for what steps.
Next, we identified what our ideal process flow would be: we
eliminated unnecessary steps, and we ensured that proper checks and
balances were still in place, but available in-system instead of being
conducted manually. Then, and only then, once we had our system
requirements (what data it could store, what process flows it would
allow for, structure of warehouses, etc.) did we begin the search for a
system. Once we implemented this system, we were able to vastly
improve our audit and tracking capabilities, in addition to saving
some of our technicians who were doing high-volume ordering
multiple hours per day in productivity.
Lean was traditionally a manufacturing concept, and there are

seven main types of waste that focus specifically around this. They
are:
 Transportation
 Inventory
 Motion
 Waiting
 Over processing
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Tony Rudd
 Overproduction
 Defects
In our example above, we had a few of these types of issues

present. Manual receipt and entry of orders created defects.
Conducting manual processing of orders created waiting, and
could also fall into the over processing area as well.
If you are struggling with the best ways to improve your

processes even after having searched your brain, and discussed
with your employees, start with these seven concepts. While they
may not all perfectly apply to digital businesses, it can give you
ideas of areas to explore.
Preparing for Automation

Now that you’ve mapped your key processes like your
customer journey and fulfillment, you have to decide which steps
you can automate, and which need to be done by a human. The
general rule of thumb I use is that if it involves having a
complicated interaction (like a conversation) or requires higher-
level thought, it needs to be done by a human. If it involves things
computers aren’t great at, like image recognition or determining
intent from a free-text field, it needs to be done by a human.
However, if you can definitively say “send this scripted email to
this person” or “enter data from system A into system B,” then it
can be automated.
In our customer journey example above, the webinar and

purchase should both be systemized. They might all be done in one
software or separated (webinar hosted in one place, but you use a
separate check-out software...there are many valid ways to do this).
Your sales call obviously needs to be done by a person (I haven’t
found any AI platforms that can handle sales calls yet!). Customer
follow-up is generally best done automated, at least at first, but if
52
you’re not getting anywhere then it can help to add an additional

human follow-up step into the process.
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Tony Rudd
Chapter 10
Automate Your Way to Freedom
B y now, you have your processes mapped out, and have a

pretty good idea of which steps you’re planning to automate
and which you need to still have done by a human. Enter our
automation tools! In my opinion, there are three major classes of
automation: interface tools, single-system automation, and what
we will call data transfers (essentially, pushing data from one
system to another internally).
Single-system automation are tools like email list management

tools, such as ActiveCampaign or MailChimp. They allow you to add
leads or customers to particular lists, and then either use them for
ongoing distribution, or run them through a pre-built automation.
The next class of automation tools are interface tools. I classify

items like funnel-building (e.g., ClickFunnels) and appointment
booking software (e.g., Calendly, Acuity) here. This covers anything
that will interface directly with your leads or customers.
Finally, you have data transfers. There are a few tools that do this,
but the one I have seen most prolifically in the marketplace is Zapier.
Essentially, this allows you to take data in one system and push it to
another. If automation doesn’t exist within a system in a way you
want it to, Zapier can also be used for this. The way software like this
54
operates is typically in an “If X happens, then do Y” methodology.
You will typically end up using a combination of these tools in

order to accomplish your automation goals, so let’s look at an
example of this, going back to our customer journey process.
Whether we think of it this way or not, an advertising platform

is the first automation tool we are using in this process. Other
people advertise in more manual ways, such as via podcasts,
speaking opportunities, or organic posts. However, in this
example, we used a paid advertisement to have the potential
customer visit our site.
The customer then watches the webinar, which is hosted on a

page, and is then prompted to purchase the product. As I mentioned
earlier, this can all be done in one piece of software, like
ClickFunnels, if you want to. If there’s a reason to redirect elsewhere,
or just host it all directly on your own site, that’s a possibility as well.
However, that’s the first piece of the automation.
Whether or not the customer purchases the product, there is

follow-up. If you have their email, a piece of software like
ClickFunnels will allow you to push that email into a particular list in
55
Tony Rudd
an email management tool like ActiveCampaign. Note that people

generally use the term “email list”, but if you’re truly diving into your
marketing, hopefully you are setting up multiple lists to delineate
between who bought and who didn’t, at the very least. Another step
would be to have an introductory sequence that all customers and
non-buyers alike receive when they initially subscribe, and then all
get added to the same bucket at the end to receive your general
marketing emails on an ongoing basis. Strategic list building and flow
is essential to keep up communication with your customers and leads!
In our flow, if they did purchase, we send them a request for a

sales call (again, automated via email). This communication would
likely include some additional marketing material, but then also
contain a link to a scheduling tool like Calendly or Acuity. This will
allow the customer to book an appointment from their available times
with the appropriate person, without even having to talk to a
scheduler. This will cause the appointment to appear on you/your
sales team’s calendar. There are also options to have the software
automatically add Zoom or Google video meetings, if you so choose.
The other step that takes place after sending a request for a sales
call is to add to their CRM (customer relationship management tool).
This would generally take place as an automation via Zapier. The “If
X happens” portion of the Zapier automation would be the previous
step (in this case, booking a sales call), and the “then do Y” portion
of the automation will then be to add a record for the customer into
the CRM.
A process flow like this is probably as simple as it gets, but serves

as an example of the tools needed. It also serves to show why careful
forethought needs to be put in so that all processes are properly
mapped and tools integrated. This end state map helps us understand
what tools/people will be used at what stage in the process.
56
57
Tony Rudd
Chapter 11
Monitoring Your Business

From Afar
ow that you’ve put all the pieces in place to remove yourself

N from the day-to-day responsibilities of operating your
business, it’s time to turn back to those key performance indicators
(KPIs) we talked about earlier. The reason we use KPIs to operate
your business is that, once you’re out of the operational tasks of
your business, you need to still be able to have a gauge for how
your business is operating.
The first step is to have a historical baseline of data. As you’re

stepping out of your business, you need to ensure that for all of the
KPIs you have chosen to monitor, you have a good idea of what a
normal value is, and what your range of variation is. You don’t need
to be overly scientific about this; just looking at the last several
months can give you enough of an idea of normalcy. Then, as you
transition out of the operational tasks that influence the metrics, you
need to ensure that they’re not drastically changing. If they are, you
need to address them immediately with your employees.
Keeping it impersonal and non-accusatory typically yields the

best results for these conversations addressing these changes in
metrics, because remember, YOU may not have set your employee
up for success. A lead-in like “I noticed that our conversion rate is
58
at 20%, but it used to be at 30%. Are you experiencing any issues,

or have you noticed anything that might have changed this?” It’s
possible that they may not be trained well. It’s possible that your
conversion rate might have decreased because you delegated
another task and are now bringing in poorer quality leads. You
need to look at the situation holistically, rather than jumping to
instantaneous conclusions about employee performance, and non-
threatening lead-in is much more likely to get that employee to
give you more information, since they will not immediately be on
the defensive.
That said, it’s important to set aside time to review these metrics
at least monthly, if not weekly, and dive further into any that seem
suspiciously different than you expected. It’s always easiest if you
can set up a report in the necessary system to automatically calculate
your KPI for you, but if it’s not possible, having an easy process to
get the data out into Excel and calculated is crucial. (This may be
another task you can delegate, but only if it can’t be done any other
way!) The absolute easiest way to set all of this up is to use a tool like
Google Data Studio to aggregate metrics across all your systems
(because, as we discussed, your KPI data will lie in different systems
most likely). However, this does require a more advanced technical
skillset to set up, and quite likely will require significantly more time
to set up than being run natively in their home systems.
The most important thing to understand about data-driven

decision making is that it is a guide. It tells you a lot of what you need
to know about the health of your business, but will not tell you
everything. After all, you have an organization of people, and in many
cases, the data is merely the start of a conversation.
59
Tony Rudd
Conclusion
60
Summary
hanks for making it this far! If you’ve read everything up to

T this point, you are obviously truly invested in your success,
as well as making the effort to untangle yourself from the day-to-
day operations of your business.
To recap, we first took a look at the state of both your business

and you as the business owner. We assessed whether your business
was truly set up to scale, or if you were doing all of the daily
operations yourself. We looked at how processes form the
cornerstone of your business.
We also discussed that taking the easy way out and shortcutting
to eliminate a few tasks here and there can be very tempting, but
that it can cause scalability issues down the road. I cannot stress
enough that taking shortcuts will result in problems in your
business. Maybe it happens a month down the road, maybe it takes
a year or two. However, at some point, I can promise you that you
will run into issues, which is why it’s so important to spend the
time up front to set up your business with the end goal in mind,
with proper documentation and processes.
Next, we discussed how corporations did get some things right,

but maybe not all of them. We looked at how to take the best parts
of corporate methodologies, leaving the fluff and red tape behind,
to form your six steps to freedom. We walked through these steps,
61
Tony Rudd
what they consist of, and why they’re important to your business.
As a reminder, the steps are:
1. Goal Setting
2. Identification of Key Performance Indicators
3. Process Mapping
4. Automation
5. Delegation
6. Monitoring
We took a deep dive into a number of these areas.
If I had to summarize the book into a few key takeaways, I

would leave you with this:
 Spend the time up front to systematically construct your

business, with your end goal in mind
 Understand your key business processes, and identify what
steps you can eliminate, automate, or delegate
 Set your processes up to be able to easily monitor the
outcomes
By approaching your business with these three major points in

mind, it will set you up to be able to develop a fruitful business
that you can free your time from.
62
Next Steps
To get kicked off and start gaining your freedom quickly, start
walking through this methodology right away for your process that
you are most involved in, whether it’s sales, marketing, or fulfillment.
 Establish your monitoring metrics for this process

 Map the process
 Identify tasks you can automate
 Identify tasks you can delegate
 Automate and delegate!
 Monitor these metrics you chose earlier and avoid the
temptation to jump straight back in
Just doing this with one process, your most time-consuming

process, should greatly free up your time, and you can then start
attacking your other business processes.
I know it can be daunting to try to approach this alone, with just

a book to guide you, so feel free to book a call at the link below if you
need my team’s assistance:
http://go.coachtonyrudd.com/call
How To Get More Help

I’ve included a few more resources to try to help you get started
taking action. Part of this is because “I want to help you,” and part of
63
Tony Rudd
this is because “I can’t show video demonstrations in a book.”

Sometimes a quick video demonstration speaks louder than an entire
book chapter.
Automation
One of the scariest steps for some people, especially those who
aren’t as tech-savvy, is automation. I’ve put together an example of
how I structured a common automation to help you through this
journey:
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/automation-example
Process Mapping
Process mapping can also be a bit confusing to someone who has
never attempted it before. As a result, I’ve put together a quick-and-
dirty approach to process mapping. There are many more types of
symbols and options available, but this is enough to get you started:
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/process-mapping
KPIs
Key Performance Indicators can be a bit daunting if you are not a
data-driven person. I’ve put together a quick discussion of them to
help you get started implementing them in your business, so you can
start your journey towards data-driven decision making:
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/kpis
Prioritization of Tasks
Prioritizing your tasks, and trying to decide what to delegate, can
also be difficult for some. I’ve put together a quick summary on
getting started with this:
64
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/prioritization
Work With My Team to Accelerate Results

We are always on the lookout for our next success story! If
you’re ready to reclaim your time from your business, we have a
range of offers, including a group coaching and training program,
and a done-for-you implementation of these concepts directly in
your business. Whatever your budget or time commitment, we
have a solution that works for you. Don’t wait to start
implementing this in your business today:
https://go.coachtonyrudd.com/call
65
Tony Rudd
About the Author
T ony Rudd has a BS in Computer Science and Engineering and

an MBA, both from Ohio State University. Tony also played in
the Ohio State University Marching Band, and was privileged to dot
the ‘i’ in Script Ohio while he was a member of the band.
Tony started his corporate career (and process management

journey) with General Electric in 2005, joining its IT leadership
program. Upon finishing that program, he moved to southern
California, and continues to reside near Pasadena.
Tony worked for several different companies through the course

of his career, managing larger organizations as his career progressed.
Near the end of his corporate career, he was managing a division of
66
an IT services company, leading 90 people and overseeing an annual

revenue stream of over $8M.
Now, Tony uses his expertise to lead his own small business, and
helps other small business owners free their time from their
businesses using the techniques he learned in corporate America and
are outlined in this book.
When he isn’t working with other small business owners, Tony

spends time with his wife and son. He is an avid runner and cyclist,
and also enjoys playing the piano.
For any inquiries, please contact

support@coachtonyrudd.com.
67

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The Three Day Work Week

A Guide to Freeing Yourself From Your Business and

© 2021 Embark Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. No part of

This publication is designed to provide accurate and

Disclaimer: The author makes no guarantees to the results

Part 1 - Setting the Stage

Part 2 - The Freedom Through Structure Framework

Part 3 - Pull Yourself Out of Your Business

The first reason I wrote this book is to convince you to hire my

While I was getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I

If you’ve made it to purchasing this book, you know that the

The goal of this book is to introduce and walk through the

In order to accomplish this, I’ve structured the book as follows:

Next, I will make a case for why process understanding and

After that, we’ll dive into the Freedom Through Structure

Finally, we’ll review how to implement some of the core

This might seem like a lot to undertake, but it really can be

Step 1: Identify your business goals and measurements

Step 2: Map your existing business processes, and identify

Step 3: Implement your identified improvements for streamlining

Step 4: Monitor the measurements you identified in Step 1

The framework you’re about to walk through has radically

Helping busy, overwhelmed business owners like you free

We’re here to help you!

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed

To your success and freedom,

Part 1 - Setting the Stage

How Did I Get Here?

I was sitting at my desk in an office in southern California. I

Then we brought over 40 people on board at once, and had to

After a few months of doing everything to coordinate the team

I needed to lean out my processes, identify waste, and take a

By applying the Freedom Through Structure Framework I will

Beware Of The Easy Way Out

If you are struggling in your business and want to take back

A key component to your processes is understanding what data

Your business’s KPIs will be a function of many different

Once you’ve identified your business’s KPIs, you can then

Spending the time up front to do it the “right way” will pay

a small business: distilling these systems and processes to their

Who This Book Is For

he method you’re about to learn about is the result of one of

This brings us to the first lesson, which is repeated so often in

So many businesses have this issue, whether by design or by

The second lesson I learned: chaos breeds more chaos. If the

There are two ways to make progress forward from a situation

The more important gain I experienced, though, is that my

exercise. My diet slowly improved. While I hadn’t put on a large

If you are feeling overwhelmed in your business with the

Check-in Statement Personal

I am currently happy with my work-life

I am able to spend enough time with my

I am able to pay enough attention to my

I enjoy working in my business

I find my work fulfilling and enjoyable

The current state of my business is what I

I am able to take 3-4 at least week-long

My business runs efficiently, with little to

I spend less than five hours per week on

Tally Your Score

What Your Score Really Means

means a disconnect in one of a few areas: eliminating process waste,

Adaptability Is The Key

hat’s the difference between a freelancer (even a freelancer