The McDonald's Test (And Why Your Business is Failing It)

Most business owners make the same mistake:

They think because they're good at the technical work, they'll be good at running a business that does that technical work.

Being a great baker doesn't make you great at running a bakery.
Being a brilliant consultant doesn't make you great at running a consulting firm.

The skill that built your reputation is not the skill that will scale your business, systems is.

Systems > Skills

McDonald's doesn't succeed because they hire the world's best burger flippers.

They succeed because they created a system so good that average people can deliver extraordinary consistency.

Every McDonald's Big Mac tastes the same.
Every process is documented.
Every outcome is predictable.

That's not an accident. That's designed.

Before you hire another person or buy another tool, ask yourself:

1. "If I disappeared for 30 days, would my business still deliver the same quality?"

2. "Could I teach someone else to do this work in under 2 hours using only written instructions?"

3. "Am I the only person who knows how this critical process works?"

If you answered "no," "no," and "yes", then you're not on the path to building a business that gives you freedom, but on the path to being an overworked employee in the business you created.

The System is the Solution.

Here's what most people get wrong about systems:

They think systems limit creativity.
They think systems slow things down.
They think systems are for "corporate" businesses.

But systems don't eliminate judgment, they eliminate bad judgment.
Systems don't reduce quality, they make quality predictable.

When you have systems, your worst day looks like everyone else's best day.

So here’s what you do:

1. Pick one process in your business that currently lives only in your head.

2. Go on a walk and record a voice note talking and describing it in detail to a 5 year old.

3. Feed the transcript to ChatGPT and tell it to turn it into a very detailed and clear SOP you can use to delegate the work to someone else.

4. Then wherever possible, include images or videos explaining the entire written process visually.

5. Then test it.

Give those instructions to someone else and see what happens.

That's how you start building a business that scales.

Let your system run the business and people run the system.

Want help building systems that actually work? Systems that your team will use without asking you how?

Reply "Systems" and I'll show you exactly how I help business owners escape the technician trap.

No fluff. Just systems.
Chris "The Systemizer" Punt