Building an Idiot Proof Business

I recall that Warren Buffett had a very famous quote “Invest in a business that any idiot can run, because one of these days, an idiot is going to run it”. Of course, the quote is not in exact words, but the meaning is there. Honestly, I have always admired Warren Buffett for his insights, not just because he is rich. His incredible foresight and courage in doing what others condemn at that point of his decision can truly earn the respect of anyone. The most recent example would be the action of steering his companies away from credit default swaps, a major contribution to our current financial crisis.

He is not just an extremely capable person, but his heart is filled with compassion. He was also quoted as saying “Frankly, an economy where my receptionist pays a lot higher tax rate than I do does not strike me as a just economy” Of course, he pays his taxes not based on personal income tax, but dividends which has different tax rates. Anyway, it’s not the focus of this post to touch on this, but Warren Buffett inspired me to develop a business system for idiots.

For my case, it’s a system for internet marketing. Few years ago, I decided to focus on just one single method of traffic generation instead of trying to build traffic in many ways. To advance in that direction, I needed a traffic strategy that:

1. Can drive sustainable amounts of traffic and the traffic must keep growing
2. It must be a free or almost free form of traffic to lower the risk
3. Any idiot must be able to run it so that I can retire and pay less for a full-time staff

This system was built in 2003 and I used it actively in 2004 to make some bit of cash. Of course, I fell into a dilemma at that time - I needed to enter National Service and I don’t want to moonlight. As intended, I looked around for someone to take over this idiot-proof system, but I did not trust anyone other than my family members at that time to handle it. I learnt several lessons:

• To leverage on others, we must first trust them
• To get people into using a system, no matter how easy it is, we have to be persuasive.
• Selling a business is often much less rewarding than keeping it and paying someone to run it

Looking back, I was too young then and made some bad decisions. Regardless, it helped bring me my first success which also brought upon a success drought, meaning I fell into a trap where I just slacked off for a few years because of previous success. Now, I’m trying to revive my system, but of course, it’s not me working the system. My brother will be using the system, but he’s now in the middle of his exams.

After his exams, I look forward to seeing how the system can still be used in today’s environment. While initial testing shows that the system is workable, the system requires tons of hardwork to use. While any person is supposed to be able to run it, he has to be a hardworking person because there is quite a lot of effort involved. If my brother uses the system successfully, I have very exciting plans for our future.

The whole point of this post is to urge readers to think about having systems when they are running a business or their life. I’m not advocating that you should become so rigid and strictly follow a system, but a system keeps you on your path towards your objective. I’m sure some of the readers here have a system that they follow and some of them had achieve some success with it. A system can be something as simple as having a weekly exercise plan or something as complex as those required to launch space shuttles.

Whatever it is, systems may be helpful for our businesses and personal life. When you systemize something, you leave fewer room for chances. Increasing x amount of effort in running the system will often bring upon x, plus or minus, results. If there are anyone who has used systems in their business or personal life, whether having achieve success or just started using, please share your experiences.