Why do you need systems?
I have been helping a friend in her business recently because she is away right now. Her son is undergoing experimental cancer treatment in another part of the country. Her business requires her to be present at a specific location for a specific amount of time Monday thru Friday each week.
When this unexpected situation happened she was concerned that her only source of income was going to have to end because she was not going to be able to physically be in both places.
Two of us stepped up and said that we would keep her business running while she was away. She has built some great systems into her business so that when we needed to step in and work her business for her, it was easy!
You never know when you are going to be faced with a situation that requires you to change the way that you live your life. As you can see from the example above, unexpected curve balls could end your business.
Other than unexpected situations that could end your business, there are other reasons why it is important to have systems as well. In order for you to grow your business, you need to make sure that you can scale past yourself. As your business gets busier you will find that your workload increases as well. It is important to identify when it is time to hire help.
Documenting what you do
If you have never documented your systems or processes before, don’t worry about it, now is a great time to start.
Documenting your tasks and processes will allow you to not only see where you are spending your time, but it will also help you to identify ways to streamline and see where you can outsource tasks in the future.
Many of the tasks that we do in our business are repetitive. Here are some examples:
- Onboarding a new client
- Writing (blog posts, social media content, newsletters etc)
- Replying to frequently asked questions
- Dealing with finances
- Customer service
It is also important to understand how often you do each of these tasks, so make sure to think about that as you are figuring out which tasks are repetitive.
Recording your process
It is easier to record your system or process as you are completing the task at hand. This will cause you to be a bit slower when you are completing that task as you record it, but documenting it while you are going through it will make it so you don’t forget a step.
There is nothing worse than trying to follow instructions and coming to a step that is missing pieces. This will not help you in the future, especially if you only have to do this task a few times a year.
There are many ways to document your process; you just need to find the one that works best for you.
- You can have a word document open while you are going through and each time you complete a step just flip over to the document and type out the step.
- You can record yourself with either screen cast-o-matic or use your phone camera. ( I would suggest if you use one of these options that you then create a word document from that video to document the system)
The best thing to do is try one of these first, find out which one you like best, then go ahead and tweak it from there.
The most important thing is to start documenting!
What needs to be done by you?
Some of the tasks in our business need to be done by us, and some of them we just think needs to be done by us.
When you go live on Facebook, or create a video for your clients those are definitely things that no one else can do for you. On the other hand, there are several things that you do in your business that you are convinced can only be done by you, but once you grow big enough you are going to realize that you can outsource those things.
As you go through your systems be ruthless when deciding which tasks you are unable to hand off. Once you have decided that these tasks have to be done by you, I encourage you to look at all the steps that you documented about the task. Now ask yourself if you can change the task so that part or all of it can be outsourced? Then once you streamlined it as best as you can at this time, now look for ways that you can do this task in bulk to save time. Perhaps you can block off some time to do the task once so that it is done ahead of time. Here are some examples:
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Newsletters
- Recurring invoices in your accounting system
I am sure you can think of a few more, but this will get you started.
What can you outsource?
Just because you identified the tasks as being ones that can be outsourced, that doesn’t mean you have to hire someone RIGHT NOW! This is just a glimpse into your future business.
Now, look at the tasks that you identified as ones that you will be able to outsource. Which ones do you think you would like to outsource first?
When you are looking at outsourcing it is a balance between freeing up your time and spending the money to do so.
I like to look at this from an analytical perspective. If I am going to spend 1 hr per week doing that task, what is it worth to me to have it offloaded? Will I be able to make more money in that hour than if I was doing the task myself?
The other thing that is important to look at is how much you dislike the task. Yes, emotion plays into your decision. If you hate doing the task and it causes you to take 4 hours to complete, but if you outsourced it, someone else would charge you 1 hour to do the same thing, it might be worth your time and money to outsource it.
There are many aspects to consider before outsourcing, and only you will really know what is right for you at this time. The other thing to remember is that if you choose to outsource something that doesn’t mean you can never take it back to do yourself again. Nothing in business is permanent.
When you are choosing the person or company that you are going to outsource to, make sure that they have the skills required to execute your systems quickly and with the utmost accuracy. Having your systems documented in a detailed way will make it easier to see what qualifications you are looking for and find the right fit for your business.
