INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building Systems That Actually Work with Ben Meer

0:00You're listening to the Travis Makes Money Podcast. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money Podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money on this episode of the show. I have a new friend Ben Mir, Ben is a writer, speaker, and coach known as the Systems Guy, his weekly newsletter, System Sunday, reaches more than 250,000 subscribers. He's built a social media following over 2 million, an executive coach to founders and CEO, so he speaks on productivity, Systems Thinking and Intentional Living. He holds an MBA from Cornell University, and previously worked as a management consultant at Ernst & Young. He's the author of the new book, How to Be Good at Life, Simple Systems to Achieve More and Stress Less. Ben, what's up, my man, welcome to the show. Hey Travis, thanks so much for having me, man. It's really an honor to be here. Of course, it's a pleasure to have you, my man. Let's go back in time first off. Okay, this is a money show. I love asking this question at the outset because we get some very interesting answers. So first time, tell me the story. First time you ever made a dollar that was

1:03like exciting or shocking or meaningful to you. So I've always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak, and the first time that I made a dollar that surprised me was all the way back in the first grade. I got in some Pokemon stickers as a gift, and I was selling them under the playground. I set up a little sticker shop, and I got in trouble because at school, you were not allowed to be selling anything. So I remember walking home, I have this disciplinary note in my hand, and I'm a good kid. I hadn't gotten in trouble up at that point. And I remember handing this letter to my dad and I have this lump in my throat, my hands are shaking, and he looked at it, he read it, and then he took me out for ice cream. He was proud of me. Well done, Dad. Yeah, exactly. And I know that that conversation could have gone

2:05in a couple of different ways. So I'm really fortunate that he always encouraged my entrepreneurship. And I get it from schools. They want to create some order, but it can also create some conformity, and it can shave down some of the risk-picking and some of the boldness and the experimentation that can lead to some of these alternate career paths. So, absolutely. Maybe folks weren't so fortunate to have a dad that was encouraging of it. I think we always want to normalize getting the advice of our parents, but at the end of the day, it's our life to live, right? So looking back on it, I think what gave me confidence for this entrepreneurial path was that moment under the playground, and so fortunate it turned out that way. You're absolutely right, man. Like I said, I've asked that question to a lot of people on the show, and every time somebody says, mentioned something about selling something at school, my next question is, when did you get in trouble? Because it's

3:06every single time across all schools. And like you said, I understand it from the school's perspective. You can't just have people running wild and selling random stuff in the hallways at school. But also, like you said, school has a way of disciplining out the dreamers and the visionaries, and almost teaching you that that's a bad thing, and that you're breaking the rules, and that's a bad, not okay to do something like this. So, in reality, the people who make the most change and live extraordinary lives are those who often at least question the rules, you know, and are willing to take the risk to break some of them. So, what did your dad do at that time, Ben? So, my dad did have a traditional career path. He was a fundraiser at a university. My mom was a first grade teacher, but he did have side hustles that were going on. Yeah. And none of them quite paying out. I think he was a little bit ahead of his time. And I don't want to speak for him, but

4:08I'm guessing maybe he was a bit just jaded by some of the bureaucracy and politics that we've all experienced in some of these traditional career paths. So, I think fortunately, he was encouraging of a different way because of those reasons. So, let's continue along the journey then. High school time frame, you're leaving, you're about to become an adult. What is it in your mind that you think you're going to do at that point? So, I fell off the path. I started to get realistic, and maybe it was because some of the things that I was being taught in school. My grandfather was also influential, and he was a lawyer. So, I started to think about law school. My undergraduate studies were in political science, and my first job out of college was as a paralegal. And what I was doing in that job was fortunately reading patents and trademarks and sort of looking for errors in them. And in that moment, I realized that I wanted to be on the other side of things, that I wanted to be

5:08the one that was creating. So, I'm glad that I sort of tested the waters before spending all that money on the law degree. I'm not saying that, you know, being a lawyer can be great. You just need to make sure that it's the right fit for you and your interests. Sure. So, what did that end up leading you to? Well, while I was at the law firm, I started my first company, and it was a skincare business. As you do. You know, when law school is no longer an option, Ben, you're going to skincare. That's what I hear is the path. I got the, you know, you read the four-hour work week from Tim Ferriss. You think it's this easy thing to start one of these side hustles, but I really had no idea what I was doing. I was really kind of winging everything. I didn't have any systems. I didn't have systems for customer service. I didn't have systems for sales. I ended up digging myself into quite a bit of a debt at that time. And it was a tough time in my life. I mean, I think I

6:12needed to be there to get to the point where I am now. There was a moment sort of in those dark days that a close friend suggested that I lower my expectations in life because I was very ambitious. I just didn't have the skills yet. The most valuable workflows are often the hardest to document. When they span people, systems, judgment calls, they can stay undocumented, leaving teams, guessing, creating inconsistency, and holding AI back. Well, that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor scribe was built to solve. Scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94 percent of the Fortune 500 that captures workflows as work happens and automatically generates step-by-step guides with screenshots and instructions. So no one has to sit down and write documentation from scratch. Teams can review, edit, and share the guides for onboarding, training, software rollouts, and day-to-day work. Scribe also automatically redacts sensitive info like names, account numbers, emails from screenshots. You know all the stuff you don't want other people

7:13saying. And as an admin, you control and enforce that across the whole team. Once a guide is reviewed, anyone can launch real-time on-screen guidance that shows exactly where to click inside the actual tool so critical processes can get done right every time. And because most AI was trained on the internet, not your company's way of working, Scribe helps power your AI agents with real context, giving them a foundation built on how work actually happens. Not just guesses. Learn more at scribe.how slash TNM and mention Travis makes money for your first month of Scribe Capture for you on select plans. That's SCRIBE.how slash TNM. So I ended up pivoting. I applied to business school. And for some reason Cornell admitted me and what happened there really changed everything for me. I remember sitting in operations class and professor said the biggest difference between high performing companies and struggling

8:14startups is their systems. And suddenly I sort of had realized why my first business didn't work out because I didn't have systems. And you can think of a system as just a reliable way to get a result that you want. But I had been winging everything. But then I started to ask, well couldn't it the same thing be true for people? For people that are thriving versus people that are struggling and constantly feeling overwhelmed in their lives. You know the systems that they use to manage their money, the systems that they use to stay in touch with the people that they care about to do their best work. And that idea set my mind on fire because I was struggling on an individual level at that point in my life too. So I started to just read everything that I could on systems and success. I remember sitting in a coffee shop just mapping out all the areas of what I imagined to be well rounded life. And then I started to build those systems one by one. And in a few years my life looked totally different. I had clawed my way out of debt. I'd gotten into better shape. I

9:15become a successful consultant. And it was around that time that I started to, you know, I transformed my own life with systems. But I started to get a bit frustrated with how much of the self-help advice out there was had stopped at motivation. Yeah. You know, we will see these pretty quotes that are like, trust the process. Yeah. And there were many years that I was trusting the process. And I didn't have a process. So oftentimes I think, you know, we will leave school knowing the names of Columbus's three wooden chips, but not how to design a week that actually worked. And I knew that there was a better way. And life has just gotten so complex that I think people don't need more inspiration. They really need better life and for structure. And that's what really set me down the path of sharing more of these ideas online and then, and then writing a book. What's your take on the state of the self-help industry at this point?

10:16I think that self-help has a bit of a problem in that reading about getting better can feel a lot like getting better. I think we've all been there. We've read a book. We've been motivated for a few days. And then life really gets busy. And we sort of those ideas evaporate. Like, you could read a book on personal finance, right? And feel sincerely motivated that you're going to save more at the end of the month. But stress happens. You have unexpected expenses. We all know what happens. You're spending kind of expands to still whatever spending you have available. But if you compare that to someone that maybe sets up a simple system where they automate, even just a little bit of savings, they've turned that intention that they have into action. And the state of self-help is it is so reliant on motivation. But that's one of the least reliable materials that we have in our lives. We want more durable materials. And I think that systems are those materials. So that's

11:17why I try to make my writing at least really hard to read passively because it's closing the gap between that intention and actually falling through with it that matters. Yeah, I feel like I had a similar journey with cell. Probably is something that most people experience when they get deeper into a certain topic. But when I first got into the space, it was like I consumed everything from everybody and was just like fascinated by this idea of continuing to improve yourself beyond the education system that the whole, what do they say, formal educational, make you living self-education will make you a fortune type of a thing. And I got obsessed with that. And then I started peeling back the layers and finding like, man, there's so much snake oil and there's so many charlatans in this space. But it does not mean that you can throw the baby out the bath water. It's very similar to religion in my opinion. It's that self-help almost becomes the religion of those who have none. If that makes sense and they seek this almost

12:19external lever to pull for internal motivation and things like that. But it doesn't ever get followed by practicality, by action, by actually doing something about it. And like you said, you almost get addicted to the dopamine hit of thinking about doing the thing rather than actually just going out and doing the thing. I couldn't agree with that more. And I think that the evolution of my morning routine actually speaks a lot to that. So a number of years ago, I thought that in order to become successful, I had to like prove to myself that I was worthy of it and deserving of that. In the way that that showed was doing this like two hour morning routine. This was in my 20s. We're like riding with my non-dominant hand. I'm sticking my face in a bowl of ice water. I'm drinking lemon water precisely 98.6 degrees and like saying these things out loud. It sounds absolutely insane. And sort of the turning point was realizing that I was getting really good at

13:21checking all of these boxes. But my life hadn't materially changed. I wasn't any happier. I hadn't built anything. I hadn't made any more money. There's this term that I love from Chris Williamson. He calls it the productivity rain dance where we think that we have to do all of these things to put us in flow state so that we can eventually do work. But it's often the work that ends up putting us in that flow state. So now my morning routine looks very different. I'll wake up. I'll drink a glass of water because I think that's important for clear thinking. I'll make an espresso. It's just one of my simple pleasures. I'll do like a guided meditation for 10 minutes with Sam Harris is waking up app. And then I'll just get started on the work. So it's literally 20 minutes instead of two hours. And I think the reason that I share that is that I think if I could tell my younger self something it would be you don't need to do this crazy morning routine to prove that you are

14:25deserving or worthy of success. There's often just a much straighter path there. It's picking a few high ROI high leverage things to do. Take care of yourself. Maybe the people that you love. And then you can just get started on the work that will actually move your life forward. Could not agree more, man. That's why I wanted you to expound on that. That was exactly my exact journey. It's like I read this book about morning routines and I'm like I got to have this you know nine step freaking morning routine just to make sure I'm productive for the day. But what ends up happening man is like it ends up working against you because if you don't check off every box at least for me I felt I felt like I had already let myself down before I was even able to get into some of the work because it was like I skipped the meditation or I skipped the affirmations or I skipped the the meditation I skipped this this aspect of my morning routine. What a you know and then I started this this loop of negative self-talk and it was like this is this just seems counterproductive.

15:25And like you like you mentioned have a couple of things that's great like it's good to have a a starting off point something that you do every morning to ground you to center you to move into the next part of your day. But just play with the play with the formula a little bit and find what's most effective for you and then just pick one or two of like the highest leverage activities inside of that structure and just do that one thing. You know you don't have to have this this laundry list of things that you roll through just to feel productive before you actually do anything that's actually productive you know like maybe just start doing some productive things and you're probably feel pretty productive. The most valuable workflows are often the hardest to document. When they spend people systems judgment calls they can stay undocumented leaving teams guessing creating inconsistency and holding AI back. Well that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor scribe was built to solve scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500 that captures workflows as work happens and automatically generates step-by-step guides

16:28with screenshots and instructions so no one has to sit down and write documentation from scratch. Teams can review edit and share the guides for onboarding training software rollouts and day-to-day work. Scribe also automatically redacts sensitive info like names account numbers emails from screenshots you know all the stuff you don't want other people saying and as an admin you control and enforce that across the whole team once a guide is reviewed anyone can launch real time on screen guidance that shows exactly where to click inside the actual tools so critical processes can get done right every time and because most AI was trained on the internet not your company's way of working scribe helps power your AI agents with real context giving them a foundation built on how work actually happens not just guesses learn more at scribe dot how slash TNM and mention Travis makes money for your first month of scribe capture free on select plans that's SCRIBE dot how slash TNM

17:31that's exactly right I think trying to create a routine that you can do on the hard days like the stressful days the days were maybe you're even traveling are a little bit under the weather if you can do it on those days then you're going to be able to do it on the good days too and you don't want it to become this self-fulfilling prophecy that if you don't do these things you're sort of set yourself up for a bad day ahead so Ben when you started writing about this I find it fascinating that you've been able to build a subscriber base of a quarter million people on something that is I mean objectively unsexy right like you're talking about systems like systems are systems and they are a very unsexy thing very needed thing necessary thing did you expect the resonance with the audience when you when you were putting this out these new the newsletters was this sort of like therapeutic for you why did you start going down this path so it did start as a hypothesis based on some prevalidated information so I think like many people I read atomic habits during the pandemic I was extremely inspired by it and the you know this is

18:37one of the most successful books of the past generation I think it sold over 20 million copies crazy what I noticed in Kindles you can see the highlights like the most highlighted lines in these books and the most highlighted line in the book I believe is you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems and for how much of a phenomenal book it is James spends most of that book talking about habits but I thought it was interesting that that word systems was in that quote and for me it seemed like maybe there was some latent demand for it I had this background studying systems in my MBA systems had transformed my own life and I also knew that there was a little bit more nuance to it he had sort of grouped systems and habits as being the same thing but actually think that habits are just one type of system there's other types of systems that can be helpful for people like a checklist can be great say maybe you're going on a trip with with friends before I used a packing checklist I would forget my laptop I once forgot

19:41pants and you know ever since using a checklist my legs have been consistently clothed ever since yeah crazy exactly or like a project plan can be really helpful if you're trying to start a business or land a dream job so I knew that there was I could build on that and help expand people's system toolkit and I think that's that's a good way to do it if you're thinking about starting something new it's maybe benchmark something that you already like and take a piece of paper draw line right down that'll of it on on the left is like okay here are things that I agree with and then on the right it's okay maybe here are some of the contrary and takes here are things that I would do differently and that's where a lot of the the gold can often live you mentioned having a system library essentially what what what do you think is maybe some of the higher leverage systems that that folks should start thinking about a little bit and then how do you actually start

20:42implementing some of these things so I know this is a show about making money so I will I'll tailor the system to to that and I do think that it is absolutely one of the most important ones so what I do I call it system Sunday I will carve out between 30 and 60 minutes every Sunday to plan my week ahead and I think that this is really important and a time for folks where they can ask themselves okay what are my priorities this week that are actually going to move the needle on my income and on my revenue and then actually scheduling that time on your calendar and blocking it off I think so often we're directing our highest energy towards things like emails or giving feedback or managing but for many folks their highest energy should be put towards at least for me like creative work strategic work maybe even sending a proposal to to a new new client and getting that

21:43on your calendar so that you can protect that time I like to say like show me someone that's you know spends three hours on their most important task during the week and I will show you what others will call an overnight celebrity in a few years right it's just like doing these you know three hour focused days stacking them up can really change materially change your your income and the quality of your life and then to the second part of your question about like actually building the systems if folks are ambitious they can then move that 30 minutes of just planning their week ahead putting the stuff on their calendar and what I call build mode and this is when you can set up some of simple systems that can make your life easier for years a lot of the systems that I talk about in the book are things that can help remove friction in your day so maybe during that time you set up something like a password manager so you're not having to go through that dreaded password reset process and trying to identify little fire hydrants and squares that can be a really good one

22:49I also like grayscale mode what studies are showing is that grayscale mode on average on your phone can help you reclaim 40 minutes a day wow research is showing is that we're spending on average three hours a day on our phone and it's often that's not restorative it's not how we want to be spending leisure but we're going up against these billion dollar algorithms that have armies of PhDs that whose sole job it is to keep us scrolling so when the game is rigged you don't want to be relying on willpower motivation you need you need better design it's kind of like we're either going to be created by the systems of others or we need to create our own to we need to create our own systems to shield our time and attention so this system sunday is kind of the neta system where you can plan your week ahead and build some of the systems and then to get folks started I think doing something like grayscale mode just to reclaim that time so that you can then redirect it elsewhere as a good place to start yeah I love the you mentioned the whole when whenever things are when when the

23:52system is rigged I like that that phrase because that's true across all verticals of life you know if it when it comes to money like the system is designed culturally to extract money from your bank account you know like I've read somewhere recently that we see between like eight and 10 thousand marketing messages per day now which is not even a number that we can comprehend like that is just programming of the subconscious mind because we're not even consciously recognizing the volume of advertisements that we're getting like that systems designed to pull money away from you and not allow you to grow your wealth health it's the same thing you know that that world is designed to make it more difficult to go to the gym to make it more difficult to eat healthy to make it more difficult to understand what you're putting your body or to be properly hydrated or to you know fill in the blank and the best combatant for any rigged rigged system is to employ your own system against it to ensure that you are the general that you're telling the dollars where to go that you

24:57are telling the minutes where they should be spent that you are the one in charge of all of those things because if you're not then you will fall prey to the systems that are designed to extract those valuable resources from you like your time your money your health all those other things but I really like that you mentioned that I do want to ask one question are you ever in do you ever get the the the question or you ever inferior self of being overly systemized is that a state that you can get to have you seen that happen have you experienced that yourself to some degree absolutely and I think the morning routine from earlier described it where you kind of fall into this over optimization trap and I've I've fallen into it and sometimes I'll refall back into it it sort of reminds me a little bit of my days in consulting when I would travel frequently and I would always book the aisle seat just so that I could get off the plane a few moments earlier but not to mention the fact that I didn't like getting bumped by the carts and I actually preferred you know sitting in the window seat I think we always have to step back

26:00and ask what am I optimizing for here because systems can absolutely be a path towards freedom but you need to make sure that you're pointing them in the right direction just a quick story that comes to mind for me you know my my fiancee Jade Von Aculta and I who's also a creator and a writer we we run a business together and we would constantly find ourselves saying that we should spend more quality time together but inevitably work would get busy life would get busy and it would just get crowded out so one system that we set up to protect quality time is just something that we call saturdays and it is exactly what it sounds like it is a date on saturdays and we will take turns planning something fun it'll be two to three hours in the afternoon we've done pottery classes salsa dancing classes some of the best saturdays are free whether a hike or a festival in the park and what that taught me is that like our you know intentions of we should spend more time together

27:03really only as good as the systems that hold them I think scheduling your fun trying to have more texture and adventure in your life this is sort of the positive of what a system can do and we always whenever we're going to want to build a system it's asking will the system bring me more joy will the system bring me more connection will it bring me more free time and if the answer is no then that system is not worth building at all and I still have to always remind myself of that that it's not really about the system it's about the the life on the other side of it the book is how to be good at life simple systems to achieve more in stress less do you find that the majority of topics that you're talking about apply to people who are like apply to anybody they're not just specifically for entrepreneurs or business owners or you know young professionals like wanting a good career or something and is that sort of why the book is how to be good at life versus systems for success or something so I was when I was in that period of transforming my life I'd love the the

28:07books on a systems for business things like the e-mith entrepreneur or denellen that us thinking in system or Peter Sanguese the fifth discipline it's a warning the goals for this book was to make systems thinking accessible for for folks live so in the book I have this model that I call the seven-life engines where it just goes through the different categories of life you have your physical health you have your emotions you have your mind your relationships your career your money and your environment and there's a nice distribution of systems across all of these areas and I think that's really goal is just to help people live their life a little bit more intentionally across these areas and just to kind of step back and think okay is there maybe a better way to do this or are there external systems that are influencing me in a negative way so I can build a better system as you were talking about especially in finances to sort of protect myself and set myself up for a better life the book is how to be good at life if you're listening right now go pick up a copy

29:10of Ben's new book I know I will be actively consuming it that's for damn sure Ben I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show my man I know you're a really busy guy I don't take that for granted where else can people go to get more from you thanks so much for having me this was a lot of fun if folks want to learn more the best place to find me is my newsletter system Sunday you know there I share one system every week for health wealth free time that's at BenMirr.com forward slash system Sunday and as you mentioned if folks want to go deeper the books coming out October 6th also I narrated the audio book if it folks prefer ice audio nice so BenMirr that's me are BenMirr.com slash systems Sunday for his newsletter and then be on the lookout for how to be good at life coming to a bookstore near you Ben appreciate you taking the time everybody else tuning in remember money only solves your money problems but it's a little easier to solve the rest of problems when you got some money in the bank so let's start there here on the Travis makes money podcast thanks for tuning in catch you next time peace