Our team operates like an API
The more your team works like software, the faster and easier it will scale.
Some of you may not be from the software world and so you may not have heard of API’s.
It stands for “Application Programming Interface.”
And essentially you can think of API’s as a set of rules that let different software talk to each other.
So how does this relate to how the Beast System works?
Well I essentially view that we connect to team members and external partners like an API.
We don’t go thru a lengthy onboarding process. We have almost no training. We just have a set of rules that they use to communicate with us.
And if they stick to those rules…. we work efficiently pretty much immediately.
Now let me explain what I mean in a bit more depth.
Let’s first make sure you understand what API’s are
As mentioned… API’s are like a set of rules that let different software talk to each other.
A quick mental model:
One app = the kitchen 👨🍳
Another app = the customer 🧑
The API = the menu + waiter
You don’t go into the kitchen—you order via the menu, and the waiter brings the result back.
A good example is Shopify’s API’s. It uses API’s to do things like:
Send orders to Amazon MCF
Pull tracking numbers from a fulfillment provider
Let apps like Klaviyo, Stripe, or TrueMed plug in
So now hopefully you have an idea on what API’s are.
How this relates to my ‘Beast Method’?
Well think about it.. the traditional way of working includes things like:
Spending months to recruit and hire someone
Spending more months onboarding them
Spending money trying to unify a culture in your company
Constantly trying to train and improve the quality of your people as you’ve already invested a lot in them
But my ‘Beast Method’ does none of this.
We intake people almost immediately with no real onboarding.
We don’t try to invest in a culture.
We have no formal training.
Rather what we do have is a system with a set of rules like:
Create a Clickup task for everything you do
All work is an update to a task
Keep your Clickup notification inbox clean everyday
You are paid for what you do, there are no fixed salaries
And so we can easily swap people and partners in and out with very little friction.
Kind of like plugging in software services.
The advantages of the API framework
Once you adopt the mental model of the API framework for your team members and partners it simplifies things massively in my view.
I don’t think a long time about whether to test out new projects. Or scale existing ones.
It’s faster to just write up some task cards, plug 1-2 new people in with the necessary competencies, and learn from it.
I run these types of tests for <$500 all of the time.
No expensive hiring. No having to let go of people later.
I give the new guys our document on how our system works (kind of like an API doc). Then we assign them some new tasks and they are off to the races.
They start updating their tasks with their progress.
The quality of your API framework counts
In the software world it’s very important to have a very clear and easy-to-use API.
This makes it easier for other software to connect to you and utilize your services.
For me it’s the same.
I need a set of processes that new people consider simple and easy to follow. But it needs to be able to scale to enable them to do quite complex work.
And the task-based system of Clickup does this quite well in my experience.
We have no meetings. Nothing is based on relationships. It’s pretty much impossible for politics to form.
Rather as long as everyone sticks to the rules, everyone is happy. Most people will even enjoy it far more than traditional employee environments.
Scaling is where you really start to see the value of this
Perhaps the biggest value of this way of working is how it allows you to scale.
Because in my view it allows you to scale more like a software system and less like a human-based organization.
And software systems historically scale far easier.
Because there is no fluffy stuff involved in software. You just send more and more requests and get more and more outputs.
It’s why online businesses scale very fast and offline ones do not.
The more you get your organization to function like software… the faster and easier you will scale. It really is that simple.
You axe all the ‘human’ elements like culture, relationships, politics, hierarchy, etc. And you boil everything down to clear processes and systems.
The problem before was that there were all these notions that you should not or could not do that.
But yeah… i’m trampling all over those notions.
And kicking some ass as I do it.
Closing thoughts
Switching your mental model of your organization to being like an API is very powerful in my experience.
It changes how you think about people, about how you scale, about your strategy, etc.
Everyone just becomes a node that is easily connected to your business through your system. You easily plug people and partners in, and also plug them out.
Over time you drive the cost and time involved in plugging in each node to almost zero.
And as you do that.. you realize how much faster and more flexible you are operating than literally everyone around you.
It’s like they’re playing some old game… and you’re dancing circles around them playing a new one.