Systems 101 for your business

As a business owners, there are certain buzz words you hear over-and-over again, in any industry or on any topic. You hear them so many times you start to think, “I’d better get on that," but then you think... "I don't know what or how to do it?"

When it comes to owning a business, one of those buzz words is 'systems' for your business.

And you think to yourself... "Great. Systems. Ok… I guess I’ll figure that out… later."

I want to share a bit more about what systems are and what they can mean for your business – because systems do not need to be complicated and having them can mean creating consistency in your business. Consistency means less headaches for you, more brand recognition and a great reputation.

SO… what is a system anyways?

It’s pretty simple, a system is when you write down how something in your business should be done – step-by-step.

That’s it.

Think of it as a way to have someone else be able to do what you do in your business should you have to walk away.

“Lara, I’m not going to walk away from my business and if I do, the business isn’t going to exist any more! I don’t exactly have time to write down all the things I already know how to do just so I can do them myself.”

And therein lies the problem with systems – that’s how most of us feel about them and what stops us from getting them down on paper. We don’t see any kind of pressing need and so it gets put off and put off... and put off.

The thing is, until you get them down it can be really hard to grow your business and on top of that, no matter how well we know our own business, we forget steps too, especially when we get really busy. 

Examples of Systems

A system can be as simple as a bulleted list of actions and steps you take in your business. It can also include instructions, templates of content for different things, and more. It’s basically whatever you think you need to run your business efficiently, which means that it’s hard to explain and possibly vague for you to grasp what you could do. So, let’s go through a few examples:

Sales

The beautiful packaging at Jolie Folie

You probably have a process for your sales.

If you sell a product, this includes creating a receipt, putting the product into a bag, box or envelope (possibly in a very specific way), and maybe writing a nice note to include in the package. That’s a system – if you wanted someone else to deliver your product to a customer exactly the way you would so that it always has a consistent look and feel to it, you've already got a simple system, you just need to write it down.

Onboarding

When you have a new client, what needs to happen? How do you want to welcome them? Right now, are you being as consistent as you want to be and are all the steps happening every time?

There are all kinds of things you could include in a system for a new client:

Do you want to send them a note or a gift?
Do you need to create a paper folder and a digital folder?
Do contracts and non-disclosure agreements need to be signed?
Do they need to be added to any email lists or Facebook Groups or membership sites?

What are all the pieces that need to take place to make sure that your new client has an amazing experience? List them in a document, and you've got your onboarding system.

Invoicing

When you invoice someone, do you always include the same information? Do you have a process if they paid by email money transfer that’s different than if they pay by cheque or by Paypal or credit card? If there are multiple payments do you have to manually input anything?

If you need to track any hours for your invoices, how do you track those, where do you track those, what information do you need to extract for the invoice?

Invoicing is a task that often gets outsourced sooner than later, if you have your process written down, you'll be able to share that with someone else so they can take invoicing off your plate and you'll feel confident they can do it the same way you would.

For all three of these examples, putting every step down for something that you do on a regular basis will help make sure that you maintain regular quality and that you can pull people in to help support you when you’re ready.

How will you start creating systems in your business? Where will you start and what are you going to get on paper first?
 

ACTION STEPS:

1.     Read/listen to the E-myth Revisited.

2.     Make a list of all the things you do regularly. Then, pick the thing you most often miss steps on or that you are most likely to outsource and outline it step-by-step in a Word document.

3.     Leave a comment and let me know what system you’re going to be working on so I can cheer you on!

4.     Check out the Biz Advantage and get feedback on your systems during the weekly coaching calls or in the Facebook Group!

How learning I have ADHD helped my business

This may sound obvious, but if we were all the same, life and the world would be really boring. We NEED people who are different, who think differently, and who don’t fit into the regular mould of things. Yet… when many of us don’t fit into the mould we often feel badly about ourselves. We get stuck thinking we should be able to do things exactly the same way as others. We beat ourselves up about the things we can’t get done without looking for other ways it can be done.

I’m here to tell you how my brain is different than your brain, and how I’ve learned to embrace what’s awesome about that. My hope is that what I have learned will impact the potential for you to see and do things differently in your life and business.

How learning I have ADHD has helped my business

I have ADHD and I was only diagnosed in the last few years. ADHD causes me to get distracted easily. I don’t complete things once they get boring. I’m often really bad at detail-oriented tasks. I have a hard time gauging how much time something will take, and I tend to feel deadlines are not real until they are in panic/almost due mode.

Before my diagnosis, I felt a lot of shame about those things. They were things that were hard to deal with in my business and often slowed me down. When I realized that a lot of it was because of how my brain works, SO much of the shame disappeared, and I stopped beating myself up (or at least beat myself up less). Embracing ADHD is what made having ADHD fantastic for my business!

ADHD means I am used to trying new ways of doing things, to complete tasks and to finish things without it always being last minute.

Jessica McCabe from How to ADHD recently wrote a song about how people with ADHD think differently and how it means that sometimes we just have to reframe how we’re thinking. It’s simple: when things don’t work out how we want them to “try different, try again,” and that’s been the key to my life and oftentimes how I coach people.

Over and over again, I talk to people who have a plan of action that they're not getting done. Months and months of not doing the task is only met with, “I just have to do it.” But here’s what I ask, “Do you? “Why will that work now?”

When something isn’t working I challenge you to try something different – what could you do instead to get you to the same goal? I bet there’s something really great that could work. You just need to give yourself permission to think that way.

I have Aphantasia

Every time I’m at an event or participating in an activity that starts with, “close your eyes and picture in your mind… a beach, your best life, how it would look, feel, smell, sound...” the room can probably hear my eyes roll back into my head.

Why? Because I am thinking, great… another activity I can’t do because I have aphantasia and can’t picture/hear/smell anything in my mind’s eye.

But here’s the thing – I’m super creative. I have a great memory. There’s a distinct chance I could tell you what you were wearing and where we were the first time we met, especially if you told me a story. Not being able to hear, see and smell things in my mind doesn’t hamper my ability to do most things in life (other than being able to pull things up in my mind, which sounds kind of amazing and I won’t deny being a bit sad I can’t do it).

What it highlights to me is how differently the brain works for different people. We all have different brains… we have different ways of learning, processing, and creating. That means that there can’t ever be one way to teach people, to ask them to do tasks, to motivate them, etc.

We need to find the right way for each individual person! So again, I challenge you not to get discouraged when something isn’t working for you, but instead ask yourself, what DOES work for you?

For example, I need to write things by hand and keep them in paper folders for my clients. It sounds kind of archaic, but if I don’t have the ability to write by hand I don’t remember things as well.

The brain is a fascinating thing and we need to recognize how differently it works for all of us.

Your brain and my brain aren’t the same, but we all have the ability to find the awesome in what makes us uniquely us and what works best for us.

If you want to talk more about the places you struggle with in your business – where you find yourself procrastinating, not getting things done, or beating yourself up, then book a consultation with me. I’d love to chat about how to find the different ways to make things awesome for you, because I 100% believe it’s possible!

Are your goals and motivations the same thing?

Recently, on a plane ride to Las Vegas I was seated next to a fellow entrepreneur who runs a marketing company. Naturally, we started talking about our businesses. When he found out I was a business coach, he asked how much I deal with business stuff versus how much I deal with feelings and emotions.

I told him that I dealt quite a bit with the feelings and mindsets of business owners - far more than I ever expected to when I started as a coach to be honest. As we continued talking about mindset, I could sense that he had lost his real motivation for running his business and he didn't really know why. Which brought up some key questions I often ask business owners – What is it that you want to achieve? What are your goals? What motivates you?

Sometimes your goals and what motivates you are not the same thing.

In his case, he wanted to make millions of dollars in his business - that was the big goal. He thought he knew why - to be successful, to have created something really incredible, to go bigger and better and make the work he was doing feel really exciting... but he didn't sound really excited about it and he couldn't verbalize why that was really meaningful to him. From where he was standing he couldn't understand his lack of motivation... from where I was standing, what he was dangling in front of himself as a carrot didn't seem like the thing he actually wanted to get him moving on a day to day basis.

WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT?

He felt like making millions of dollars would mean he had really succeeded.

Okay, but why? Was he feeling motivated on a regular basis? Making millions of dollars was a big goal that was going to take awhile... what was going to feel like a win between now and then?  

He didn't really know.

Was he happy? Not really.  His business was his life but he wasn't really feeling excited about it at the moment. The joy and excitement of entrepreneurship had kind of fizzled out.

So what WOULD make him excited... while he was working on making his millions?

The more we chatted the more we found that thing that actually excited him.... travel. He knew he could work from anywhere and he was in a situation where he wasn't really tied down to any one city at the moment. So... why wasn't he travelling?

He didn't know.

The only thing holding him back was making the decision to actually do it. (mindset!)

For him, seeing this motivation as a reason to reach his goals started making more sense than just working to make millions of dollars. His million-dollar goal wasn't tangible enough to get him jazzed every single day  – travelling is attainable and is something he can do now right now.

So, if you are in business and you tell people your goal is to make more money, but find that you’re not motivated (there is no wind in your sails) is it time for a reframe? What motivates you? What changes need to be made in order for you to reach your goals? How can you get excited about your business and what you do again?

Asking yourself what you really want is a conversation you need to constantly have with yourself. Checking in and asking yourself this on a regular basis will keep you on track and help you achieve your real goals.

Having business goals may seem like the way to stay motivated, but it isn't always (and that's not only OK, it's normal!!) 

And if you want help figuring it out, book a call with me - or come check out my next planning day! I'd love to talk about whether I'm the right person to help you figure that out, as well as how to keep moving forward towards reaching all your business goals!

Are your prices right?

Pricing, like sales, is one topic that business owners often get really uncomfortable talking about.

Are you charging enough? Are you making enough? Should we revisit that?

"UGH!! LARA!!! Leave me alone!"

As a business coach I don't have to leave them alone, because that's one of the reasons they want to work with me. ;)

Here are three things to think about when it comes to your pricing and whether or not it's time to make a change.

1) Are you making enough money?

When you look at how much money you're bringing home from your business (after paying your expenses, staff, saving for taxes, etc.), is the amount what you want to be bringing home? Is it meeting the minimum requirements you REALLY need? How far are you from having the amount of money you want/need to pay for the extra stuff that you'd like?

If you feel like you're working all the time and still not working enough hours (and therefore how could you ever make more money because you don't have any more time to give!) it may be time to look at your pricing. (It could also be time to look at your systems and where your time is going, but that's another conversation). :)

Do the math - how much more time do you have? How much are you making? Are you happy with that or does something have to change?

2) Are you remembering your non-billable hours?

When you own a business, not every hour you're working is something you're getting paid for. Networking, learning, updating your website, sales calls, blogging, marketing, etc. - those are all hours that you're not getting paid for.

If you think I have X hours available in a week and I want to make Y dollars and you figure out your hourly rate by dividing Y by X - you're going to have a problem.

Make sure that when you think about how much things need to cost for you to make the money you need, you're taking into account those non-billable hours.

Put it on paper - how many hours a week are you doing non-billable hours? Are you accounting for those when you think about how much time you have available to deliver services?

3) Are you charging what you would be charging if you didn't have to worry about what people think?

Some people really want to increase their rates but the fear of people telling them they're too expensive, getting mad at them, or deciding not to buy from them scares them so badly they never take action.

The fear of what might happen is impacting their bottom line.

Instead of worrying about the worst case scenario, let's think about how things could go well. Or how things have gone for other people...

I have had many clients increase their prices and even if a few people stopped buying from them at the new rate, the rate increase meant they were now working less and making more money.

I've had people increase their prices and not one single person made a comment or complained.

I've had people increase rates for new clients, but not for existing clients as a way to start phasing in increased pricing.

If you weren't worried about other people, would you change your pricing? What would that look like? What would it take to start making that a reality?

Take some time to answer all three of these questions and assess where you're at, where you want to be and what you should do to get there.

And if you want more help and support with that, I am hosting a two hour training on pricing that might be the right next step for you.

Take some time to look at your pricing so you can make what you need to be making instead of stressing about money (or lack thereof). That's not why you started this business and I want to make sure that's not what your reality is.
 

How to sneak "vegetables" to your audience

You know how some people talk about sneaking vegetables into their family's food?

"I can't get my kids to eat the right healthy stuff so I hide it! Pureed vegetables in their meat foods; they never knew it was there! I'm am sneakily keeping them healthy even though they don't care about healthy. BWAHAHA!"

I want you to think about how you can sneak vegetables into your audience.

WHAT?

Ok, so here it is:

What we want and what we need are not always the same things.

What experts know we need and what we think we need are not always the same things.

That means that while we want to talk to everyone about the things we KNOW they need… they might not be thinking we're talking to them because they think they need something else. And that's why we need to talk about the "something else" and hide a bit of the stuff we know they actually need inside of it.

What your audience thinks they need to know

Let's use some examples.

Maybe you know that what people need in order to have more energy and feel better is to move and exercise more. You know that once they do that they're going to start feeling better all around, which is going to have a snowball effect on their lives.

Meanwhile, they're thinking, "I just wish I didn't look dumpy in every piece of clothing I put on."

What your audience really needs to know

You may know the problem isn't that they, "need to lose more weight" but that's all they can focus on right now. So, you need to talk about how to lose weight, and while doing that you need to work in some ideas of what they really need to know and do to be healthy.

Here's another example, you're a business owner and your business coach knows that business strategy, planning and working on your mindset is really going to help you move forward in your business. But you really just want to know how to market yourself better so you can get more clients and learn how to screen share during a Facebook Live. If that business coach pays attention and talks about marketing and gets your attention with some how-tos and simple strategies to get more visible, they can weave in the importance of business planning and mindset as part of THAT content.

You're not being dishonest

This is NOT being dishonest. It's giving people what they want, and learning that the best way to get the right messages to the people who need it isn't to yell louder and louder until people understand what they're saying, it's to get their attention with what they want and educate them while they're learning about that thing.

I don't know about you, but I know some people would never CONSIDER eating a mostly veggie based meal, but give them a good meat lasagna and they're excited and ready to eat. And if it was GOOD and REAL lasagna that had some healthy vegetables in it (no bait and switch here!), everyone gets what they needed and wanted.

How will you sneak "vegetables" to your audience?

So, how can you sneak vegetables into the things your audience really want? Thinks about the people you talk to on a regular basis... what are they asking you about? Are they often asking you for things that don't seem like the right place to start? Can you start there anyways?

Leave a comment telling me how you can apply this to your business or if you aren't sure how - come over to my Facebook group and ask and we'll brainstorm it out together!

Want more content and tips like this, with all kinds of vegetables hidden into the meat sauce? Join my free Facebook Group!

And if you want a bit more on HOW to provide value to your audience and figure out what they want, check out this blog post: http://thebiz.studio/blog/are-you-providing-value.