The MindShift Podcast

How to Prevent Team Burnout with Marquis Murray

1/19/23 3:08 PM

5 Minutes Read

Episode 81

Marquis Murray is the founder of Ditto, a consultancy that creates clarity around the work done inside of organizations through creating SOPs, systems, processes, and automation to make work easier, more streamlined, and prevent team burnout.

If you’re a business owner, I encourage you to consider the below:

Does your business seem disorganized?
Is your team burned out because your business lacks systems and processes?
Are you struggling to prioritize finding balance in your life (quality time with family, self-care, time off, and hobbies)?
Don’t you want to build a business that can run without you, providing you the time and financial freedom you dreamt about when starting out?

If your answer to any or all of the above is yes, then you’re in the right place and you’re going to want to listen to this episode for sure!

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full Episode:

Find out about Marquis’ mission to put an end to workplace bottlenecks and prevent team burnout.
Discover how you can duplicate yourself as a business owner.
Learn why it’s essential to take time to make time.

Episode Highlights

Who is Marquis Murray

- Host of his podcast called “In Systems We Trust” and the founder of “Ditto.”
- He creates clarity around the work done inside of organizations through creating standard operating procedures(SOPs), systems, processes, and automation to make work easier.
- Marquis is passionate about empowering business owners to achieve a life of freedom.
- When he’s not optimizing workflows, he is either reading a book, honing his skills in photography, kayaking, playing bass, or out for a walk with his wife and twin boys.

Reflecting on his childhood

- As a kid, Marquis loved building model airplanes and cars. He’d be the one to follow instructions and to document a process.
- He has always liked things in a certain way or place.
- When he looks back, he can see that there has always been an inclination towards processes and systems.

His interest in digital marketing

- After high school, Marquis went to business school to study marketing.
- Marquis started a small business that was born from a hobby of his. He’d record bands and artists and had a little makeshift studio at home.
- To gain clients, he needed to market himself. He dabbled in Google Ads and Twitter, built his website on WordPress, and before he knew it, he was doing websites and social media for friends.
- He decided to specialize by going back to school to study Digital Marketing at the University of Toronto.

Starting his agency

- After his studies, he went to work for an agency as a digital marketing manager.
- It was a smaller agency, so he was exposed to multiple facets of the business.
- With his freelance and agency experience, he had a good feel for how it all worked, so he started his marketing agency in 2014.

Solving a problem as an agency owner

- When you’re starting as an agency owner, you have to wear multiple hats.
- There was a turning point where the business was doing well, and he had to get help.
- As the team grew with multiple people and contractors over time, he found that he had to do repetitive tasks and training.
- Time was a limited resource, so he started creating SOPs and leaned into the process side of his business.

The pivot

- Through the development of processes and systems in his own marketing agency, Marquis took his love and passion and applied them to the world of business.
- Apart from offering digital marketing services, the agency also assisted with CRM’s for workflow automation and putting together clients’ project management tools.
- Due to covid-19, marketing took a big hit, and Ditto was born.
- Marquis decided to pivot and seize the moment by creating SOPs, systems, processes, and automation for organizations so that they can thrive, scale and avoid burnout.

The name Ditto

- Marquis has been working on a pivot for a while. He was feeling unfulfilled as he was in marketing but was more of an operations guy.
- He had to do some deep work and discover what was unique about him.
- It came to him in the middle of the night. He jumped out of bed and went to Go Daddy to check the domain and that was it; he started conceptualizing his new company.
- It made so much sense as ditto means to duplicate or repeat.

The importance of processes for an owner

- As your business grows, time becomes increasingly limited.
- Less time and energy need to be spent on the execution side of the business, and you need to relinquish control. You can’t do it all.
- As a business owner, you can then focus on the strategic side of the business and allow for deep thinking.
- Systems and processes allow for more efficiency and eliminate unnecessary repetition.
- You will then be able to enjoy the freedom that you had been seeking when starting.

Prevent team burnout

- Just because you’ve always been doing things a certain way does not make it right.
- When one has a team, it’s so important to get outside feedback so that you can examine why things are done as they are and if there are better and more efficient alternatives.
- There’s nothing worse than people in a team not knowing what needs to be done, their deadlines, where to access information, or how to collaborate.
- Systems and processes help prevent team burnout by providing clarity, efficiency, and the ability to work better and smarter.

You have to take time to make time

- Busy business owners are already pressed for time.
- However, it is important to get intentional about setting time aside for documenting your knowledge and processes as it will save you further down the line.
- Marquis would take days to sit down with paper and pen and document all the things about how he does things in his business. It must be prioritized.
- Creating Loom videos is also a great tool to use as a form of documenting.

How does Marquis want to be remembered?

- He’d like to be remembered for doing meaningful work.

3 Powerful Quotes from this Episode

16:04 – “That’s why a team is so important in process development and improvement, is because you may think you have the right way of doing it just because you’ve been doing it this whole time. But there are other ways to approach those processes.”

20:03 – “And so every time you jump in to answer a question and say, I’ll do that, you’re taking that away from someone, and you’re removing that opportunity for them to learn and resource the processes that you create for them.”

24:49 – “Are you ready to scale your business, or are you afraid that when you get there, you won’t be able to handle the inflow of new clients?”

About Marquis Murray

In his nearly 15 years in the industry, one thing that hasn’t changed is the rate at which burnout and stress are affecting business owners and their teams. That’s why Marquis works with his team to build systems around your everyday processes so that you can finally break the plague of unpredictability in your business.

His why: So that owners can achieve the life of freedom they’re really after.
His Mission: Put an end to workplace bottlenecks.
His company’s core values: Freedom, order, meaningful work and helping others.

Marquis believes in having the freedom in business and in life to run things on your terms. He realized that other business owners were searching for the same thing. It became growingly important to do significant work. Work that makes a difference and ultimately helps others work better and smarter and take back control of their business.

The Ditto effect: Prevent team burnout so that owners can live the life of freedom they started their businesses to achieve. Marquis has a new purpose, a new reason for going to work every day, and has decided to build his business around it.