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The Weekly Tone

There was a viral-ish moment in the 70's (think: disco, not TikTok) where business owners were called out and chastised by a wide-tie-wearing, deadpan-talking, small business guru named Michael Gerber. He released a series of bizarre, infomercial-style business seminars where he preached that most owners ("founders" wasn't really a thing yet) are insane. Yes, insane. They're nutty, he argued, because they go to work willingly for a maniac every single day—the worst boss in the entire world: themselves.

They toil and toil without lifting their head up to see the big picture (what he called "doing it and doing it") until they've, nearly in a trance, built a perfectly designed Alcatraz. And it's a life sentence. Good luck getting out alive.

As a "business owner", the job is never done when you're doing it yourself. It's similar to a Greek eternal punishment myth. But it's worse because it's self-punishment, as opposed to being handed down from a testosterone-soaked Zeus in a cut-off Harley Davidson tee.

There's no one to blame for your plight other than yourself.

In other words, the business owns you.

Further, Gerber explained that there is a myth (not a Greek one) surrounding entrepreneurship. It's not all burning passion for your dream day in, and day out. That's a bald-faced lie. In fact, he calls it an "entrepreneurial spasm" that lasts ever-too-short, before you realize that you've enslaved yourself to an inescapable machine thirsty for your sweat and tears. I can say from personal experience, motivation ebbs and flows.

Gerber, in riling up his studio audience of swanky businessmen and women in oversized glasses and ugly tweed jackets - poses a big question - how the hell could you escape this trap of your own design? More capital? Smarter hires? No! McDonald's, he offers.

McDonald's?

Home of Le Big Mac? What do a burger and fries have to do with getting my agency off the ground? Everything, Gerber offers, because McDonald's does something entirely unscalable (aka cooking), in a scalable fashion, where the damn burger tastes the same in Tampa as it does in Thailand.

When I first came across Gerber and his book The E-Myth, I was a bit hesitant about his cheesy (no pun intended) delivery of information that I'd seen in these seminars someone reposted on YouTube in all their vintage glory. At the time, I had built a million-dollar growth and SEO agency in six months that was about to kill me. I had my personal trap built, that's for sure. In a moment of despair, this book was thrust upon me violently by a much older, wiser CEO who had famously turned around a large regional bank in Florida.

I realized Gerber wasn't fetishizing burgers or cheap food, but systems, so crystal clear that anyone could perform the tasks required to generate a standardized product or service. It's so standardized that McDonald's, upon opening a franchise, will tell you exactly how much money you'll make in your region if you follow their plan.

I take businesses like Mcdonald's for granted as if it was always there. I never lived in a time before Mickey D's. However, before McDonald's (aka most of human history) systems and standardization weren't in the food service industry. Period. No Chili's, no TGI Fridays, and certainly no Chipotle. Every restaurant was a one-off threatening to drive the proprietor mad.

McDonald's basically proved to the world that food could scale through systems and SOPs (standard operating procedures).

If you're sitting there and thinking, "My highbrow consultancy isn't a McDonald's goddammit!", allow me to splash some fountain soda on your face. It better become a McDonald's or you'll go out of business or insane; flip a coin.

Of course, I'm referring to building your own systems.

Systems are the highways that connect effort with big goals. With systems, things don't get done fast or reliably enough. Whether you're flipping burgers or redesigning airplane fuselage. In fact, without systems, many lofty goals won't get accomplished at all.

Systems have saved me from ruin and showed me my way to building things that look a lot like passive income.

Systems also do something more interesting for the user, they protect you from needing superstar hires you can't afford. In McDonald's, because of systems, pretty much anyone on planet earth with 30 minutes of training can lend a hand in creating the perfect burger. It's not a knock against a company when you say, "Any clown could do that job!", it's a compliment to their systems!

Now, that's pretty incredible.

Here are the most important systems I've used in my businesses:

• Role definitions and specs: an extremely detailed list and description about a job's functions, tasks, and performance criteria - good until you redefine it

• SOP binders: user manuals of every single process in the business and how to perform it (onboarding made easy) - this takes awhile to build, do it once, and be free

• Weekly (or monthly reviews): here, we measure talent against their role definition

• Organizational chart: even if it's just you and your labrador at your startup, you need to build an org chart to visualize the whole system flow

Suggestion: Become a "systems person" - funky 70's wardrobe entirely optional

This week, I’m taking meetings from Miami, FL

Global Markets: The Big Trendline

I do my best to not discuss technical analysis at the dinner table along with religion and politics. Depending on who you're talking to, it's either viewed as the molecular biology or astrology of investing. Tech analysis has nothing to do with value and everything to do with patterns and historical data. You usually end up looking like a clown. But I'd be an even bigger clown if I didn't share this with you.

I can't help but notice the massive respect the 200-day moving average is getting in S&Ps. When we had a chance to break it in both September and October, it acted like a cement floor.

So, while I never suggest charting to be a primary method of capital allocation or decision-making, it doesn't hurt to pay attention when price action gets firm amidst a world of pain (crypto contagion, Fed hikes, and sluggish earnings).

The rule here is: pay attention when price action doesn't mesh with the popular narrative as there's often money to be made (or protected) in these inflection points.

*This isn't investment advice.

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