July 12, 2023

SYS 129: How to Run a Physical Business Remotely: Insights from a Sailor Entrepreneur - Interview with Pantelis Zirinis, CEO of It's All Greek To Me

44 minutes

🎙 Pantelis Zirinis is the ultimate remote businessman. He spends most of his time sailing the oceans while maintaining a busy entrepreneurial lifestyle as CEO of It’s All Greek To Me, a restaurant and souvlaki bar serving authentic Greek food in Paddington, London.
Steve and Pantelis talk about how even the most ‘brick and mortar’ of businesses can be run effectively, remotely.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
💡 Pantelis works two days a week, during which he gets in touch with his 16-member team and deals with business meetings.
💡 Pantelis’ remote workers include himself, his Operations Manager and an admin resident in the Philippines.
💡 Systems and Outsourcing is working with It’s All Greek To Me to fully systemise the operation as an ongoing project.
💡 Systemisation negates the need to rely on one person and mitigates the risk of losing one key staff member.
💡 Standardised weekly team meetings facilitate KPIs' upkeep and replace the need for 20 to 30 separate communications throughout the week.
💡 Continual improvement and the ability to prioritise, including knowing when to say stop, are vital to the automation process.
💡 Set your company's quarterly goals realistically and split them into sub-goals to assure completion and avoid over-challenging your team.

BEST MOMENTS
3:58 - 💬 ‘At the moment, I don't have the plan to go back physically to the business. I go back whenever it makes sense on my personal life, more than on the business.’ - Pantelis
12:03 - 💬 ‘Employees crave structure. They crave thinking, ‘What am I meant to do today when I show up?’’...But once you have a structure, you need to replicate that so it's standard no matter who's doing that job.’ - Steve
21:33 - 💬 ‘Creating systems will always be a work in progress. If you go for perfection, you'll never going to get there...You just need to run it, then after a month, make a review. Improve it. Improve it. Improve it. It's never going to be perfect, but it's going to be good enough so people know what to do.’ - Pantelis
22:04 - 💬 ‘The concept of continual improvement: once you started documenting 'this is how it happens now', right or wrong, and not overthinking it and just saying 'this is the status quo', then, you have something to improve. And often people ask me, 'When should I start creating systems?’’ - Steve
26:31 - 💬 ‘What worked for me was that we had to keep our company meeting on the same day, same time. Every time we move it, people were dropping out.’ - Pantelis
32:25 - 💬 ‘The idea of an Agile Project Development is that your team has a certain capacity, and if you can roughly figure out how long in terms of ‘work units’ the project will take over a month. I discovered that when I did something similar, I massively overestimated what my team could achieve. And myself!’ - Steve

GUEST RESOURCES
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zirinisp/

VALUABLE RESOURCES
Website: www.SystemizeYourSuccess.com
Facebook Group: Facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/
Instagram: Instagram.com/systems_and_outsourcing/
YouTube: YouTube.com/@drsteveday42

ABOUT THE HOST
Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely. After totally nailing this concept, he spent his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve’s been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants.
Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don’t know how to create systems or get the right help.
Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.

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