Defeating Chaos, Breaking Loose

In Your Roller Rink Business: Defeating Chaos, Breaking Loose

By Sam Carpenter

Note: My life-specialty is helping owners of small to medium-sized businesses break loose; to finally eliminate organizational inefficiency so growth can happen, profits can increase, and personal freedom can be found. In 2008 I wrote (what some call) the definitive book on business systemization, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. The 4th Edition was published in 2021 -Sam Carpenter

Bricks and mortar, virtual, retail, construction, service or product-producer, owneroperated or with a large staff: It doesn’t matter. Whatever the composition of the business, dysfunction almost always has its roots in the same foundational weakness: a fire-killing, chaotic, non-systematic approach.

The Roller Rink business? Often familyowned, it’s the perfect example of a small business that is surviving but is bogged down by a multi-tasking, fire-killing approach. There are a lot of spinning wheels and, therefore, lots that can go wrong. It’s a too-common scenario.

Is there a fix? Yes, and it’s a simple thing.

Let’s start here: As an owner/operator, do you sometimes think you’re expending your long days fruitlessly “herding cats?” Do you just know for sure – deep down – that you can prosper and even “have a life,” but you just can’t seem to break free to make it happen? Is even more hard work the answer? How about another bank loan for some internal improvements? Or maybe you need a from-the-hand-of-God manager who will calm things down while dramatically increasing your bottom line?

Nope. All the above can help, but it’s not the solution you’re looking for.

Know this: With a different leadership tact, in a very short period of time, you can turn your operation into a super-efficient machine that can grow. You really can, finally, break on through to the other side, to find yourself in the personal place you’ve always dreamed about.

How long does it take to effect great change? Usually just a few months of part-time effort. (Of course, there’s some work to do, but it is typically not intrusive and time-consuming.)

The Work the System methodology takes a simple yet deep tact, one that begins with a single “tweak” in the leader’s perspective of how the business is mechanically constructed and operated. With this new vantage point, inefficient methodologies are easy to detect, and subsequent necessary actions come naturally.

I call this new perspective the systems mindset.

The systems mindset compliments the brilliant works of top motivators and business/ personal gurus such as Steven Covey, Anthony Robbins, Jim Collins, Robert Ringer, Michael Gerber, and Dale Carnegie. Better said, the mindset gets underneath these proven methodologies and makes them even more potent.

In my business, Centratel, I worked 80-100 hours a week for 15 years with an income just barely enough to support my two children. (I was a single custodial parent.) But when the systems mindset awakening came to me twentythree years ago – suddenly, in a single moment of time – I instantly began to turn things around. I now work no more than two hours a month while my personal income is…let’s just say… more than my wife Diana and I need. Yes, I substantially profit-share with my leadership staff.

I now operate a number of ventures, including an international non-profit, but my original business of 38 years, Centratel, is an elite-quality, high-tech telephone answering service with approximately 800 competitors nationwide. It is, by several statistical measurements, #1 in our industry. An intensively employee-dependent operation with wages comprising over 50% of monthly income, our bottom line regularly exceeds 30%.

There are other hyper-successful small businesses like Centratel out there, too, spread across a multitude of industries. They operate with their own versions of a systems mindset, too.

Here’s the reality: Most small business owners see their worlds as a complex, confused, random mass of sights, sounds, and events. And because of this misperception of bottom-line reality, the leader is working long, stressed hours, killing fires, and performing endless recurring tasks… and is almost always contending with cash flow problems. There is no time or money to build a solid infrastructure, coddle customers, train staff properly, or do the creative tasks necessary to create growth. Usually, family life is less than optimal, too. And so many times there are health problems. It’s a pity. As the years march on, entire lives are spent this way! You know it’s true. You’ve seen it…or maybe you’re experiencing it yourself.

So, what is the very basic foundational reason for business mediocrity and failure? It’s such a simple thing! Immersed in the chaotic day-to-day, the leader doesn’t see the mechanisms that are producing the bad results.

The systems are there, working constantly whether one sees them or not. So, it follows that unseen (and therefore unmanaged) systems will produce random results that are seldom optimal. Fixing these bad results is called fire-killing.

The leader who is blind to the machinery that is producing the bad results won’t be able to reach into that machinery to adjust it so it will create desired results.

The successful leader sees the machinery and, therefore can adjust it to produce desired results.

Again: It’s the seeing part that is critical.

How does the successful systems mindset business owner spend his or her time? In system improvement, the opposite of fire killing….

How is your operation? Profits of 30% and more? Is it serene and calm (yes, even a roller rink can be that way.) How is your personal life? Is the business slowly wearing you down?

The solution is a simple one. Read my book and find out how to finally break loose!

How do you get the book? For free, you can download the first part of Work the System at www.workthesystem.com. Or buy the complete book on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. It’s in hardcover, Audible, and k\ Kindle. For hands-on personal help implementing the Work the System Method, go to WTS Enterprises.com.

Sam Carpenter was born and raised in upstate New York, and after over four decades in Oregon, Sam now resides in rural SE Kentucky with his wife Diana. His background includes engineering, journalism, publishing, surveying, forestry, construction management, telecommunications and a myriad of blue and white collar enterprises and jobs.

Author and entrepreneur, he is founder and president of Centratel, the premier telephone answering service in the United States. He has owned and operated the business for 38 years and his experience rescuing and then propelling the enterprise to the number #1 ranked answering service in the U.S., comprises the “thread” of his best selling business book.

Originally published in 2008 by Greenleaf Book Group, Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less is now in its fourth edition (2021). His second book, The Systems Mindset: Managing the Machinery of your Life, was published in 2016 (thesystemsmindset.com).

Sam’s outside interests include mountaineering, skiing, cycling, reading, traveling, writing (currently working on his fourth book), public speaking, an overseas non-profit 501C, local property development/rehabilitation, and especially long “rucking” hikes with his two hounds in the surrounding Kentucky wilderness.

In Oregon, he was a U.S. Senate and Gubernatorial candidate. He is Married to Diana Bybee of Kentucky.