The Uncommon Man Project

EP19: Business Owners looking for More Time without Scarfing Profits

• Episode 19

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In this powerful episode of The Uncommon Man Project, we sit down with Roscoe Patterson, a master of efficiency and process design, to uncover how business owners can reclaim their time and energy. Roscoe shares his journey from tech enthusiast to efficiency expert, guiding entrepreneurs in reducing overwhelming tasks and reclaiming their purpose in both work and life. Listen in as we explore how Roscoe transformed a 25-hour client process into a streamlined 11-minute workflow, and how he’s harnessing the power of AI to make it happen.

We dive deep into the real reasons business owners feel chained to their work and why simplifying systems is the key to more freedom and family time. If you're ready to minimize working hours, maximize efficiency, and reconnect with the reasons you started your business in the first place, this episode is a must-listen. Learn how to make AI your ally, identify unnecessary steps in your processes, and finally reclaim the time you deserve.

Three Takeaway Tools

  1. Time Reclamation Strategy - Learn techniques for streamlining your workday, so you can invest more time in family and passions without sacrificing productivity.
  2. Relationship Reset Guide - Practical insights on fostering deeper connections with family and friends, moving beyond typical advice to actionable steps you can implement today.
  3. Financial Independence Framework - Discover a modern approach to wealth-building that challenges conventional money advice and sets you up for a life of freedom and security.

Ready to take control? Join our community or explore our programs and coaching to learn how you, too, can lead an extraordinary life.

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so guys welcome this is Roscoe Patterson
I'm really really excited to have him on today
what you will get from this video
from this podcast is a clear understanding of how to
minimise the working hours
for busy business owners
how to engineer your current business
so it close effortlessly
and learn how to have more time
enjoying the things you love doing
which is one of the reasons why we often
take the risk of building our
own business in the first place
and I think that's probably one of the
really important things that we
we often forget now
before we do dive in with Roscoe
and have him walk me through
and walk us through really
how he took one of his clients from a 25 hour process
which to me is you know
that's a large portion of your week
down to 11 minute one
so I'm really excited to hear how you
how you've done that with your clients
what you do
and in this new technological age of you know
I feel like I feel like
we're having the internet experience all over again
with with AI and functionalities and efficiency
so I'm really excited to hear your opinion
on other things
but can you give me an idea like who's who's Roscoe
who are you
um so I have spent pretty much all my time uh
since I was a young fella in technology in one way
shape form or another
like I have a pretty clear memory of my dad
who's a builder actually interestingly
um he bought a Commodore 64 and uh
he came home one day to discover
his
young fella had pulled apart this brand new computer
he spent thousands of dollars on
and had it spread across the table
and you know I was you know
I was like 5 years old
and I'm like pulling things apart and uh
I put it all back together and turn back on
and it works so not
not not not not uh
not like I speak the language of tech
it's my thing anyway uh
fast forward my first business
first brick and mortar business was
I had a couple of internet cafes
this is before of course the iPhone came out
as soon as that came out I exited those
I've been in marketing and business
and entrepreneurial
ways in many different ways
and even had a start up myself over the years
but I spent the last
I think it's like four months just in my cave here
unpacking what I think we can do
with this really cool tech that we have right now and
uh yeah
doing some case studies one that you just spoke about
which is engineering task
so they can be done like Uber efficiently
so we can get our time back for sure
just I think
I'm so excited about this one
because I think it'll impact me personally
but like
one of the biggest things I can do for clients is like
how do we how do we get back your time
how do we make you more efficient
just by adjusting your thinking
by giving you more energy
all those aspects
but what is interesting looking back in hindsight
you see the invention of the internet and it came
came through and rather than going okay cool
we have the internet
we can do more things and we can get faster at things
we can do all this so we can work less
it was like no
produce more like now we've got a chance to do more
profit more things and I'm like
have we been smart enough to learn from that
for the current business owners
coming into this new world of AI
this new world of deficiencies
will they ask better questions
will they be like right okay
are we gonna go for more or am I finally going to go
cool can I finally like get that time
that reason why I set up this business
to go and spend time with my loved ones
I recently had a son and I'm like
there's nothing
more awesome than getting out of my office
other than having a quick 10 minute break and be like
how you going buddy and he's smiling away and I'm like
will will the guys make that
can you can you give me some idea of the
the clientele that you've worked with
but more an understanding of like
the problems that are facing
it's it's
it's various sort of entrepreneurs in various
entrepreneurial settings and there's
you know there's
there's things that are uh
front of house and back of house
so there's been you know um
couple hundred used cases
but the main thing that's been showing up is that
everything we do
we have a particular flavour of how we do it
in our own businesses each one of you
you know the people you work with
they they have a way in which they do things
and that way is currently mostly unconscious um
it's mostly it's mostly just knowledge in their head
and it's existed there for
you know decades
they've been doing this thing
and they do it a particular way
and they don't even remember
necessarily how they ended up doing it that way
but it's usually a series of
you know unfortunate events that LED to them
you know doing invoicing a certain way
or doing this a certain way
so that they don't have dramas or excess pressure
or all these kind of things
these like micro distinctions they go through
so I'm saying all of that to say that basically
anything that is a task is really what I'm touching
you know anything that is a complex task is
is the edges of what we can touch with AI um
with the other the other superpower that
I bring to the table is not just AI
but instructional design and this is the
process of understanding how to unpack something
so you can get any old person to do something
and in this case this
the the someone to do the something is can be AI um
which is really cool you know
so that's kind of the landscape lens
you've kind of
I feel like you've encompassed things that
that my clients bring across the table is challenges
instructional design
yeah what is that like
what is that
you know you know
there's like and
and I'm so I'm not I'm not an instructional design nerd
I'm nerding out on it at the moment
but it's basically like people who write processes
people who design the way in which you do stuff
what do you think about McDonald's
for example in a billion dollar corporation
run by teenagers with pimply faces
you know like that's a Dollar Point yep
and it's
and it's because they documented systems and processes
and learnt how to transfer capacity and capability
to get someone to push the button at the right time
to do the thing to do the step right
and they took they took complex things
like running a fast food restaurant at scale
which is which is spinning and
and juggling a lot of things
you look at most restaurant
tours that don't have those processes and systems
they're running around like blue ass flies
like they're just like you know what's going on
don't know what's coming at them and the reality is
is that
they're doing a whole bunch of things really well
and then
there's lots of good operators out there that can just
juggle things and spin plates
and do all of that and do a really good job
but it's fully reliant on them being on the tools
it's fully reliant on them being there 100% you know
and instructional design is the way out
it's the latter that one step at a time
you can build yourself a process to get out of those
roles in your business
you know
so what I find with guys in the space
myself included by the way
I always say look the biggest roadblock in
your business is always gonna be you
and we have this Assumption
I'm like I'm too important
I'm too special you can't replace me
therefore I need to do everything you know right
I can't put this into a system
somebody else is not gonna do it well enough
what do you say to those guys
let me tell you
let me tell you a Tangent on track story yeah
so I had a um
a guy that I learnt a lot of instructional design of
smack me in the face with something once
he said like how did you do that
thing and he was trying to help me unpack a bit of IP
I'm like oh
it's just intuition he's like bullshit
bullshit intuition doesn't exist
I'm like what hold on surely
surely intuition like gut feeling
like surely this stuff exists
he's like yeah
and you're having a momentary insight
or piece of intuition because you had
decades of encountering this problem before
and you have piles and piles and piles of principles
and distinctions and reasoning
as to why you do something a certain way
and then you have this moment you call it intuition
but you're kind of just calling it that
so that you don't have to think about
that pile of distinctions and processes
and all of those experiences you had
you just calling it a gut reaction and the truth is
is that gut reaction is just like a zip files
like compressed information that's just like yes no
you know like let's do this thing this way
which is cool
and it's also like
if you unzip it and take the time to unpack it
and understand how you do something
you can get any anybody to do any task
and we have you know
too many billion dollar corporations
that prove that point you know
like that that prove that point through systems
the thing is is that not that you're not magical
and not that your context isn't special
it is both of those things
but it's taking the time to
freeze frame by freeze frame
slow down a process to make it as good as you
so that any
anybody can reproduce the same result as you
and it's very doable it's actually very doable
it's just a process
to learn how to make these processes
now you've used the word
that scares the shit out of most business owners
takes time
I don't have time I don't have time for tonight
do these things to get myself more time
so the the thing you said to me before
let me tell you about this time that it takes right
yeah remember you said
the example
that we turned a 25 hour task into an 11 minute task
yeah so it took us time to do that
it took us two and a half to three hours
to engineer that process
but we didn't have to do the 25 hours
so we still saved time even though it took time
it was yeah
it nominal you know
like it was a fair exchange of time
so fantastic
let me tell you the story of that
um just so
so everyone has context so basically
um a maid of mine is a consultant
does a lot of pitching for tendering and request for
quote typework
you know in the process
and that's what we systemise
that's what we spent the time on
um and this particular process
uh it's
it's a consulting firm in it and it usually
you know works
with regulators and and big institutional operators
so it has to have a project plan
a project budget and a and a project timeline
three documents that has to output and my mate
she's really really good at uh
she's really really good at writing these documents
it just takes her time
cause she has to think through all of the dependencies
all of the all of the things that could happen
all of the milestones she needs to break down
then
she needs to pitch it in such a way that it's hitting
the Mark and she needs to um
make sure that it's gonna
you know
meet where she thinks the budget is
there's all of these a complex process right
and as tendering and quoting is
and you have all of these moving parts
and the thing is is that we could go if I asked
when I asked her
what she did in this two and a/2 hours
this is what it looked like right
I said okay
so walk me through it how do you do this
like I just did the broad ass question to begin with
and we listed all the things out that she did
I'm like anything else
anything else anything else
and there was a bunch more things
and then we started to try and do it as per her list
I was like oh no
I can't do that cause it's missing X
oh no I can't do that cause it's missing why
uh oh I have to get
then I have to go do this thing and this thing
and it's just this it's literally like
like a process lobotomy it's very joyful
yeah yeah okay
okay
it is like it's like getting into the weeds and going
okay being a fuddy daddy and going okay
this is why I do this thing this way
this is why I send this thing this way
and it's really understanding the why
of each and everything it's understanding the
exactly what you're doing with each thing
it is understanding how you do it
and then what do you do next
and keeping it on that train
and it's just it's really just unpacking things
piece by piece by piece anyway
so the process we did with her was pull it all out
that mess you start with a mess
and you try and recreate the result with the mess
by following the process and you quickly find the gaps
um but you'll also find
the very next thing we found
was a lot of extra steps
that were actually unnecessary
that she just kept doing for years and years and years
because she did it once in one proposal
and so the way you test for that is
you pull things out one at a time
until the process breaks
so you try and minimize it as well
so you don't just like get everything out
you also try and reduce it
boil it down and just make it
you know tasty gravy
just as just as rich as you can and just what you need
nothing else you know
um so that was cool
and then we had the process clear
like in a paper model just like a manual version going
okay yep
that would work that would reproduce the results
that's when we took it over to the AI
when we understood the task really clearly
we understood the clear recipe
and then we went over to AI and we're like okay
let's start trying and
and it's called prompt engineering with AI
let's start trying to tell the
the AI to produce these outcomes explicitly
the way we want them
and that is just like a rapid process of going
you know ask it to do it this way
see what it produces kind of produces okay results okay
let's change the way we ask
let's ask it to do it this way
do that change it again
and it's just dude it's like
it's as simple as I'm saying it is
it's just work it's just you just gotta do it
you know just like a hole
you gotta dig the fucking thing
it ain't digging itself like
and it's funny I was gonna say
is any of these conversations come to blows yet
that people are like you just destroyed my process
ah bloody hell
I forgot this thing I forgot that thing
I can understand
the frustration of someone who's going God
like the tension that builds
and I'm always said talking to my guys about tension
I'm like you gonna lean in
then lean into the tension
cause it's beautiful things that come from that
I mean you're talking like
I can feel the frustration rising
when you're going through a process
and that's right that doesn't work
I forgot about those living pieces
and then to come out the other side and be like
you know you're holding a golden egg
you're you're holding the goose really
and then it's just time and time again
it keeps producing and man
I am so excited about
the creativity that's gonna come out of people
because they have more time
and the problems they will solve
I love entrepreneurs
I love business owners because they're like
that's a problem I'm gonna fix it
they're creative people
even though they may find themselves
that I am not very creative
I'm like
you build a business mate like you solved the problem
you're creative yeah
what do you find in terms of I guess
have you found there's a bit of a roadblock
for people to get into that thinking process of
of breaking their system down
yeah I mean
what I just explained was I just said
go do go do a Marathon and you haven't trained yet
you know I just said like
you run straight into the gauntlet boys haha um
so totally there's a way to do it easier um
when you're starting out and it is a muscle to build
like it's a muscle to build
to think about these things this way
and I think the simplest thing you can do
with any process is just get your
get your phone and just literally take photos
step by step and just tell yourself a photo story like
okay
even if you're sitting down to do a quoting process
like many builders for example
they would go about that process entirely differently
depending on who their subbies are
and what all the relationships that they are
they have and all this kind of stuff
you have a process that doesn't fit into a cookie
cutter cookie cutter process necessarily
so just imagine that you're documenting
like just taking one photo at a time of each step
and trying a bit
as simple as just trying to take a photo of each step
and a step is like
you're doing something and then you finish doing that
now you're doing something else
and if there's
if there's anything in between the doing this
and then doing this take a photo of that too
what do I mean by that well
if I was gonna dig a hole
I'd get the tools out of the truck
I'd put them beside the job
I'd maybe Mark where I'm gonna dig
I so I'd take photos of how I'm doing that
like just break this break it down into freeze frames
think of it like frame by frame
and that's all the process is
it's frame by frame recreating everyone's genius
and when you think about it through
like the idea of a photo you just literally going okay
that's what I did that's how I did my magic you know
anyone who thinks they're too special to
share what it is they do
if we took a video of them doing it
and freezed every frame and asked ourselves a question
we could probably reproduce the same result
I think you've hit on probably
one of the
key points in how important you are in this scenario
because you mentioned the unconscious earlier
we just go through things and you mention oh yeah
I I Mark out the hole that I'm gonna dig
most people just do that automatically and they're off
they haven't even thought about that was a step
ah shit that was a step
and you can imagine on a much bigger scale
how important your questioning is
all the process that you take people through
just to bring those thoughts from the back of the mind
into the front of the mind oh yeah right
you're right at that point that's what I did so yeah
yeah I can see how important it is
I was in front of a group of people talking about this
recently and there was a guy who had a
screen door installation company
and we're doing a bit of a hot seat with him
and he I
he said to me I'm like ah
I've had some guys that you know
I could never fuckin
get them to reproduce the results I produce
or whatever and I'm like okay
give me the name of your worst guy ever and he's he
he gave me the name Brady and I'm like okay
Brady the tradie okay so
now what I want you to do is
I want you to invent systems that are step by step
that you capture everything
so even Brady can't screw it up
and what I love about this frame of reference is
everyone has a guy that works for them
they're like I never want any of them ever again yeah
that's what you wanna do
is you wanna build it like battleproof
the worst person you've ever hired
and and
and when you think about a system at that level
and design for the
design for the worst common denominator kind of thing
you you've kinda hit something that I find
really important
and literally hopped off with one of our guys that day
we call him the Sage
he's one of our older gentlemen he's a smart dude
he's built a cool business
he lives a pretty outlook beautiful life but um
it's this idea of things that are built for a solution
and they usually cover
like 80 to 90% of the processes that
that you need maybe it's quoting
maybe it's something it doesn't doesn't quite nail it
and I always say look
you're gonna end up with some sort of fragrance stock
you're gonna have
maybe three or four different softwares that plug in
that do their one thing
what do you say to the guy who says look
ah you know
for this guy I quote this way
for this guy I quote this way
I've got quite a unique
special system that varies a lot um
will this even work for me
yeah I would think that I mean
what you just described to me
how my brain instantly thinks about it
just to react to it directly
is the first system to build
there is a triage system of what type of quote is this
which way am I gonna send this traffic
am I gonna send this down the cost plus path
or I'm gonna send this down fixed price path
like which type of like
have a system for triage
that comes before the other system
and just have that as a quick little
you know am I sending it this way or that way
that's that
that's that's how I think about problems like that
that's so simple that's so simple and powerful easy
alright so it goes
you might have built multiple
let's use quoting systems
you might have three different quoting systems yup
all that similarity
so it's easy enough to build and then you're like okay
this one's for a friend this one's for a cost plus
this one's for some big company
whatever they go down the three different paths
that's really neat yeah
what um
do you use a vast array of subscriptions
and AIs for yours
or they individual for different ones
no
uh so very simply uh
like I use I use
I use 3 tools primarily um
Google Suite
uh chat GPT
and I use make.com for AI automations
um and so the reason I keep it very simple is
is that there will be better tools
and better stacks than what I just said to you
in time but this isn't a time
this isn't a time for selecting the best tool
we're in a time where AI is moving so rapidly
this is a time for getting your skills refined
like we know that
we know that the best chippy in the world
he he's better than any hammer that he's using
do you know what I mean like the best chip in the world
he's got the skills
and he probably bashed an Alan with a brick
if he had to like he doesn't really
like he's he's tool agnostic
and I think that's the way to approach this stuff
is keep it simple stupid
get good at unpacking think about point
point this thing the other way
rather than pointing AI out in the world and going
what can I do with this point it into your business
and go what problems if I solve in my business
would this be powerful for me
and and
and that's where you just keep it simple
Google DOC Chat GPT
any other software packages you
you're already using you know
you don't need to go and change everything
you don't need to retrofit some big
expensive installation just keep it simple and
and be in a time of experimentation
learning play
unpacking figuring it out
like just be in it you know
that's the most important thing
Ross guy mate
you I think
you've just relieved a huge amount of stress
for a lot of people cause fuck
how do I you know
you're busy over here running a business
you got stuff you're doing anything
like how do I keep up with all the new technology
I'm like you don't
you know that's
you wait you wait five years and then and
and then the super snazzy model comes out
that you care about we're in like iPhone version 2
who cares if you got a 2 or a 4
no one gives a crap like in reality
in hindsight and I just love that
that simplicity um
that's one of the things that has
in the last 12 to 18 months in my own world
has been like
how do I simplify everything that we do to get the
like the gravy like you said
for our clients
to get the best result as fast as they can
and then how do we deliver it in the most simple way
like the the most simple way
and I'm still simplified
like I'm still eliminating things
I'm like
we're about to eliminate that out of the business
that out of the business that out of the business
and then how do we or those five things
what were the great things about them
how do we do that with AI
how do we solve that with AI rather than
I think you're right with people going
AI's out there I've got to use it
I'll just start using it
no what is the problem in your business
or the thing that you would like to solve
and doing it that way
alright that yeah
I think I think
I think that needs to be 70% of the attention
70% of attention needs to be on like
solving problems you have right in front of you
and operating your business
20% needs to be focused on growing it
and 10% 10% you need to allocate to like education
play experimentation weird bets
like you do need to allocate
a little bit of time to just fuckin around and
and and
and tinkering like yeah
especially
especially thinking of it through a tinkering lens
like you learn stuff when you treat it like a novel toy
treat it like a Lego set you know
like treat this this dock
like you're building your own set of Lego
and your own set of instructions
and you just kinda like
recreating it from the ground up
I think that's where to play with it from
how do you how do people kinda connect with you
find out a little bit more of what you would do
would be super helpful for them and their business
and getting back their time
um
mainly I mean
I just I'm just I've got a website roscoe dot co yeah
um rnbs co dot co I am on Facebook a lot
I'm just like a I don't have like a snazzy
sexy thing for people to opt into
but what I will say is I'm just a real human
send me a message you know say hi
that's the thing ha ha ha I love that
I think there's still this
this idea of this combo or this idea of like
I'm gonna eliminate everything and just have AI
I'm like no it's Iron Man
like it's the human with all the extra awesomeness
I'm like just do that it's doesn't have to be
it's never it's never black or white
it's always grey enjoy the greatness
get somebody who can fuck if you
if you're at the point get someone who can fuck around
and find out your business
for you tinkering with the things
hey look this is what we tried this week
this is what I broke this is what we what went well
yeah I think it's really cool
and I really like that I'm a human
send him a message so those who are listening
please
if you think what Roscoe can do can help you out
I would love to see any business owner with more time
so they can spend their time
our mission is stronger means strong communities
and you need time for that cause
as soon as somebody has more time
they go out into the community
they talk to their neighbour
they take their kids to sport
they build better families
it's a it's a huge domino effect
so I I really do thank you for your work mate
I really appreciate what you're doing
I think it's awesome I love who you're helping
and I love how you're doing it
I think it's a really cool time
and what you're doing is it's pretty special
it's cool thanks man
appreciate it dude I have one question for you
I'm actually this is this is a brand new question for
um I think I'm gonna throw it at the end of podcast
from now on it's like often we ask
we get quite deep in and some of our work
and people asking you know
how do I discover my purpose and who am I
and I figured out the other day I was like
maybe it's not who you are
maybe it's the question is what are you
if I was to ask you what are you
what would you say
uh
I don't know some days
I feel like a giant psychedelic mushroom
trying to understand the universe
yes that's a good answer
I like that it's a good start
what do you feel like another day
sorry what was that
what do you feel like on other days
when you're not the psychedelic mushroom
uh I don't know
just
just I mean just a big kid
just life's an adventure like there's
there is um there's nothing better than just
you know doing stuff you haven't done before
like I've got a bunch of mates
and we hang out and we do stuff together
and we just started this practice
where we will
do something random for a few weeks together
so we're getting we're getting a basketball coach
to coach us in basketball for like
four weeks and then we'll shift to something else
who knows we could be doing
could be doing synchronized swimming next year
I don't know
but just doing random stuff and having fun and
you know and
and not trying to be too serious about it
all is important
I'm glad somebody's doing it
this is one of the things
we mentioned in our last event
we're in Byron Bay
and we started the morning with Sunrise
do some warm UPS doing some intention sitting
it's all very serious stuff
and play a game like you're back at high school
you know the guys are laughing
playing around tackling each other
it's a great time
I might never ever forget that you're here for fun
I think yeah
one of the things about business
we get serious it's like God
gotta make money gotta get more time
gotta do these things gotta solve this problem
I'm like don't forget to laugh man
don't forget to laugh