SYSTEMS

Today, I want to talk about systems and processes automations and outsourcing in your business. And I think this is so important and something that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners struggle with, as they really start to scale and grow their business, right?

Especially if you're a service based business owner, you now have enough clients where you're bringing in that revenue, but you are spending all your time servicing those clients. So how do you continue to grow without duplicating yourself, like, I can't kill myself. So that means I need to be able to get more done in less time. So what gives, and a lot of business owners jump to outsourcing right there, and they'll just go straight for the VA. But there's a lot of lower hanging fruit that you can make yourself have more time available through systems and processes and automation, that will actually be cheaper than outsourcing. So that you can rely on the outsourcing for the higher level work for work that really requires an actual person to be handling it.

When I talk about systems and processes, this is really making sure that you have standard operating procedures documented for your business. So every time you do something, you should have a document that outlines every step of doing that thing, and you can have a document that outlines step by step, or you can record a video and then transcribe that video. But you really, really want to be taking time to get your SOPs together. Now, because that is not only going to allow you to go back and look at okay, is there any way we can tighten up this process and improve this process. But it's also going to make onboarding when you do outsource so much easier, because they can onboard themselves for the most part, they can train themselves.

Another thing that is so important to set up systems and processes around is templates, right? Build out templates, we have a template for our social media content creation. It's in a spreadsheet, if you want that it’s available on my website, but we have that template it out, which really helps us content that's like getting repurposed and reused often. And you have our core pillar content that all lives in the master spreadsheet. So we can pull that in when we're creating social media content for our clients, and use that as a jumping off point. We also have a base calendar in terms of okay, we're hitting on this topic X number of times per week or month, and we're talking about this X number of times per week, per month. And so then we work backwards to create social media content from there, which is so helpful, because it just cuts that social media create content creation, time and half.

Your graphics for anything: social media, email, anything that you are using kind of over and over again, create a template for it, that doesn't mean they're going to be the same every time. But you're already you know, 30% of the way there instead of starting from scratch every time, right. And that's also going to give you some really nice consistency. So if you're using something like Canva, to create your graphics, get some templates created there, right? If you're using Pinterest, get templates, and have templates created for all of your different pins that you're going to be pinning for your content. That is SO powerful Instagram stories, all of those things have templates for anything that's going to be going out more than once, right? Emails, also nails where you're going to template out your email, so you might have a couple of different layouts for your email marketing. And so what you do is is you work you start from that template, and that helps SO much.

We use this for SEO, we have an SEO checklist. So when a new client comes on with to work on SEO with us, we have a checklist of everything we need from them to get them on boarded to get them started. We have done a checklist of everything that we're going to look at as we do our SEO audit. We then have Okay, here's the general plan that every SEO client is going to need this work for the most part, right? We have that checklist, a template of that checklist, and we just duplicate it for new clients. That cuts down on our onboarding so much. We also have an onboarding checklist, super easy. If you are planning on outsourcing and building a team, you can also create a checklist for application process when you're hiring someone new onboarding when you're hiring someone new onboarding when somebody is leaving, all of these things, save you a tremendous amount of time. So whenever you're going to be doing anything more than make sure you're setting up a system and a process around that thing, right?

We do the same thing for ads clients, we have an onboarding checklist which includes everything we need to check for them, you know, making sure their pixel is installed on their website, firing correctly, and all that kind of good stuff.

Back before I was using a CRM, which I'm going to talk about next, and automation, I had templates for all of my invoices and my contracts and things like that, so that I could duplicate that and really use that as the start. So you're already 30 or 40% of the way done versus starting from scratch every single time, right is so so, so helpful. Do these SOPs get that documentation and really look at? Okay, can we set up a template around this thing? What would that look like? Do we? Do we already have a template around this thing? How could we improve that? How can we tighten that up. And if you already have started outsourcing, ask your team members, right? Because you might have templates that you created when you were doing that task, you've now outsourced that task, be they the people who are doing it day in and day out. And week after week, maybe they have some insight, and how the process can be tightened up, right how the template can be improved. All of those things.

So then this really becomes not just you as the business owner pushing this forward, right, but your team members. So we actually have, and this is going to get into the automation piece a little bit. But we have recurring tasks for everybody on the team. So every month, they do a little bit of an audit of all of their tasks. And look at is there any opportunities for improvement to save time, energy, anything like that, in our existing in our pre existing templates, and strategies and processes, they're. So that should be the first thing that you do templates, setting up systems and processes. So you should do that before you're going to outsource.

If you are just now starting your business, and you still have time to take on more clients yourself, and you don't need to outsource yet, or you're not even sure if you want to outsource, that is the perfect time to start doing these things. The worst thing you can do is not have any of this done, and then be trying to do it at the same time that you are hiring and onboarding someone new, because it just makes it so much more hectic. And then you feel like, Oh, I need to outsource because I don't have time. But I don't have enough time to hire and onboard that person. Right. So having systems and processes and templates, and sops in place will takeaway that issue for you. Because they can really onboard and train themselves for the most part. And it takes a lot of that work off of your plate. So next, let's talk about automation.

AUTOMATIONS

So when we're talking about automation, that is again, typically going to look like utilizing a tool that will automatically do that thing for you, instead of you or someone else on your team having to execute that task. So what are some examples of this, if you're using a CRM program like Dubsado, what I use, or Honeybook, or anything like that, you can have it set up so that when a lead comes in, you can automatically duplicate and update that your relevant contract, get that contract sent out, it will automatically send that contract after your discovery call if you want. And as soon as that potential client signs that new contract, it'll automatically generate an invoice for them. And as soon as and it'll automatically send that invoice to them. And as soon as they send that invoice to them, it'll automatically start their project. So that's all automation versus you having to go into your email and, you know, duplicate your invoice template and send that out and you know, follow up to check to see, okay, have they paid? Have they not paid all that kind of stuff, right? And so this is a super powerful automation, both for product and service based businesses, right? Because we're all doing invoices to a certain extent, even if you're a product based business, and they're at the checkout page, right? You could think of that as an invoice, right? And so you can also set that to kick off other things.

Once they've paid their invoice, it automatically sends them an onboarding questionnaire, and they have to fill out all that information in the onboarding questionnaire. And that's all the information you need in order to get started. And you can actually set up automatic reminders and nudges for them. So if it sends them that invoice and they haven't paid and it's been over five days, it'll send them a reminder. If they've paid and you've sent them, it automatically sent them that questionnaire you And they haven't answered in five days they haven't completed it, you can automatically have that send a reminder to them. And so this is really, when you're talking about something that you're going to be doing. Even if you don't have a ton of clients, or you're not making a ton of sales, yet, it's still something that you are going to do every time a new client comes on board.

And so you are still saving yourself time, in the long run of things. Another automation example would be if you have a booking form or an inquiry form on your website. So say, somebody just fills out a contact form on your website, you could have that automatically send them a email, like thank you so much for filling out this form. You know, please go ahead and book a discovery call at this link here. And then they go to that link and that booking link, I use acuity, you can use calendly, schedules the call. As another example of this, that booking link has your availability, so you can set to just make discovery calls last only 30 minutes or buffer it 15 minutes before and after every call. I don't want to be available for people to book calls on Fridays or on the weekend. And it'll actually connect to your calendar if you use Google Calendar outlook. So if you go in and set, say you have a doctor's appointment, and you put that into your calendar, it's going to automatically not have make that time available. So then you don't have people accidentally booking when you're booking calls when you're not actually available. It’s super, super helpful.

If you have existing clients, and you have a monthly call or a weekly call with them, or they just want to have a checking call, you could create a meeting type that is just for clients only clients have that link. And so they're able to easily and you know, for free book a, you know, one hour client call or something like that, right? And it automatically gets into your calendar. And you can also have it, ask them a series of questions. So before discovery calls, we have certain discovery calls set up for certain types of clients, so that they can give us an information ahead of that discovery call. If a potential ad management client comes in, and I haven't talked to them because they found us either through a referral or on social media, it helps a lot. They’ll come in and they’ll decide if they want to book a discovery call with us. It will ask them questions that we need ahead of the discovery call to see if we can help them, if it makes sense, or if it's a good fit. And then once they fill that out, they're then able to go ahead and select a time to book that discovery call.

Now ahead of the discovery call, I have all the information that I need in order to have a super productive call with the potential client. And we have that set up for SEO, social, all those types of clients. You can also have it if you're a coach, for example, if your clients are booking their weekly or monthly calls it can have a recurring forum come up like, go ahead and fill out this form and tell me, how have things been going, what are your wins, what is anything you're struggling with, anything like that.

If you're a product based business, you can actually have your checkout connect and automatically generate a new product. I'm thinking specifically of wedding stationery here. Once they check out, it can automatically generate a new project and dubsado with certain checklists for you. You can have it automatically generate a shipping label and things like that. There's a lot of really great automations you can utilize for your business both as a service based provider or a product based business. If you're like, Oh, this thing doesn't talk to this thing over here, I’d definitely look into Zapier. Essentially what Zapier does is, it helps you to have two websites or two pieces of software, talk to each other. So say you use ClickUp for task management. However, ClickUp doesn't have an integration that they've built with Dubsado which is your CRM system, but you want them to talk to each other in some way when you know a new client is created in Dubsado. You want that to automatically create a certain set of tasks on ClickUp. So you could then go on to Zapier's website and check to see, can I connect these two? Can I have these to talk to each other through Zapier? and It’s something that's super handy, because we all use so many different websites and so much different software all the time. But they don't always play well together. So something like Zapier really helps to bridge that gap in terms of doing automations.

A great example of that is when anybody purchases one of my courses which are hosted on teachable. For example, if you're buying the click up for entrepreneurs course, those people are automatically when they're purchasing click up for entrepreneurs from my teachable page, it automatically is adding them to my email marketing provider, which is Active Campaign. And then it's automatically triggering them into a funnel from there, that's going to send them a series of emails specifically geared towards getting started on ClickUp and being successful on ClickUp and using QuickBooks for their business. We connect those two things with Zapier. So it's really, really amazing.

Once you have your systems and processes set up, I really encourage you to look at, does this technology exist that I can automate this thing? What's the pricing around that? Can I afford it? And if you've been tracking your time, which you should be, you can actually say, “Okay, now that I have this template created, if I'm actually able to automate this thing, I typically take X amount of time per week or per month to do this thing. So automating it is going to save me X amount of time.” And what amount of money is worth it to me to save that time? You can really tie it back to your budget and your dollars at that point and these are some really great ways you can start to dip your toes in the water with automation.

OUTSOURCING

When it comes to outsourcing in your business, I've said this before, a lot of people jump straight to, I don't have enough time in my business, so I have to hire a VA. And what can happen in that instance is you are actually outsourcing things that could systematize your process or have automations around them. So you're actually really paying a premium, or an actual human being, to do those things. To do those super manual tasks, it would be cheaper to have a system and process template or automation around those things. And what I see a lot of business owners doing, especially if this is your first experience kind of outsourcing and building a team, is that you outsource but you don't really have a plan around, if this person who I'm outsourcing to is not doing revenue generating activities, they're just saving me time.

If you're not really getting clear on if they're not doing revenue generating activities, that means that I need to take my time that they're saving me to now go out and focus on revenue generating activities. What often happens there is now you've increased your expenses, because you're outsourcing to someone, but you haven't increased your revenue and your sales to match that. So your profit margins are taking a hit and you're not able to pay yourself as much. And this happens so so often and people start to look at okay, well now I can't afford to outsource because of that reason.

So getting really clear is the first step if you're thinking about outsourcing. And establish okay, what would this person do? And you should have been tracking your time by now. So you could say, okay, I want this person to take this off my plate. Now, this takes me this amount of time per week or per month. So it's probably going to take them that amount of time plus, you know, plus or minus a couple of hours as they get going. And is that going to bring more revenue into the business? If it's a no, that's okay. Not everything you outsource is going to be revenue generating. But then you need to say, okay, so this person I'm outsourcing to for 10 hours a week. And I am going to reallocate five of those hours per week doing lead generation doing that revenue generating activities that are going to bring you more clients and get you more sales.

And then the other five hours a week, I'm going to work less and I'm going to take a little bit of a break. But getting super clear on that split is very, very, very important. So that you don't get into a situation where you're like, I'm spending all this money to outsource these things to this person. But I'm not making any more revenue. So I'm actually paying myself less than I ever was.

What happens a lot of times there is people end up letting their VA, or whoever they've outsourced, go and you end up in the same place that you were before. I see this all the time. It's super, super common. You're already at this point, you should have already set up your systems, processes, and templates around everything that you're doing in your business. You have SOPs standard operating procedure documents that outline: this is how you do this step one, step two, step three, for everything that you're doing in your business. Anything that is happening more than once you should have those things templated. Then you've looked at, okay, what can I automate in my business? What tasks can be automated through different tools? What are those costs? But typically, you are going to have anything that's being automated is going to be cheaper than outsourcing it.

So that's why we really want to look at that automation piece first. And then you're going to look at that outsourcing. When you're looking at, okay, these are the tasks that I need to take off my plate, that might be tasks that you're not good at or you don't enjoy doing. They could also be lower level tasks and you want to focus on the higher level tasks in your business. Look at your list of tasks, and you've already gone through and looked at, okay, these already have systems and processes around them. And I know they can't be automated.

These are the things that I might want to outsource. You're going to look in your time tracker, I use toggle, and you're going to look at and assign, okay, on any given week or month, I spend X amount of time doing this task, X amount of time doing this task X amount of time doing this task, okay? Because then you're going to look at that list of things that you could outsource. You're going to look at the time of each thing and typically, you want to pick something that's going to be super impactful. For example, one of the first things that I got support with in the digital marketing agency, was content creation for clients. I was spending 30 hours a week creating content and managing the social media channels for our clients. I started to outsource that and I started to outsource the engagement piece and the day to day management piece, because I knew that was going to free up immediately 10 hours of work a week for me. With that free time, then I could go out and focus more on lead generation. And then I said, Okay, great. Once we do that, I'm going to start to outsource some of the content creation so I can drive the strategy of the content. I can train my social media manager to be creating that content in the way that I would and will kind of you know, through systems and processes and strategy calls got familiar on each client. And so now what happens is I can drive the strategy. She spends time creating those graphics, doing that hashtag research, all that good stuff, she creates that content, I'm able to review it, and then we're able to get it out for the client. And it's great. So what happens is, I'm able to not only keep in the higher level thinking space, the strategic space, which is harder and much more expensive to outsource. And she's able to really allow me to do that because she's doing a lot of the deliverables work.

When you're looking at your list, look at okay, what is really taking up the bulk of my time? Or what do I really hate doing? And those two things are going to be what you really want to look at outsourcing. And you're going to know exactly, okay, great. If I want to outsource this thing, then that means I need to hire someone for 30 hours a month. Okay? And so you can easily start to look at, okay, what's the average cost of somebody who's going to do something like this? Right? So typically, a social media manager is going to be at least $35 an hour, right? So you could say, Okay, great, I'm gonna budget $40 an hour for a social media manager, I'm gonna hire them for 30 hours a month. And or we'll call it 40 hours a month. So that's frees you up for 10 hours a week, right? 40 hours a month, times 40 hours a week. Now you have an expense around that person. So you can look at it like, okay, can I afford that? If I can't afford that right now, how many new clients do we need to add in order for me to be able to afford that, while not paying myself less? And these are all questions that they're not set in stone, and you can be flexible around them, and they can change.

You might say, okay, so first, actually I can't afford 40 hours a month, I'll just start with 20 hours a month. Then, I’ll reallocate that time that I'm saving to do lead generation so we can go out and get to more clients. And then we'll be able to bump that social media manager up to 40 hours a month at that point, right? Without paying yourself any less, play with those numbers. It's not right, or it's not wrong, but you want to make sure you're looking at all those numbers before you hire that person before you start the hiring process. And this is something that so many people don't do, right. But this is that higher level thinking as a business owner, right? These are all questions that a business owner has to answer for themselves. So you really need to step into that CEO mindset and be thinking about these things from that perspective when it comes to hiring a team.

That is going to ensure that when you outsource, you are creating a business that is going to run and, and be successful and function properly. But also a business that supports you, right? Because the magic is when you start to outsource, you can take those vacations without having to worry about everything burning to the ground, right? You can go on vacation without checking your emails constantly and touching base with clients while you're on emails, right? This is a really great piece of the puzzle for especially service based business owners right when you get to this place. And these things that you need to answer for yourself, when you are looking to start outsourcing are questions you need to be able to answer whether you are looking to hire one person, or you want to build a team and grow your business to multiple seven figures. These are all still questions and strategic questions that you need to be able to answer as the business owner because you are driving the strategy as the business owner, no one else. So that is, again, why it's so important to set up those systems and processes first, then look at your list of tasks. And again, use your task management system, right because then you're going to be able to see all of your tasks that you're doing, and you're going to be tracking your time.

You’re going to know how much time each of those tasks is taking you. You're going to set up those systems and processes and tablets first, then you're going to look at, okay, what could be automated? And that's always going to be changing? Because automation is technology and technology is always changing and improving. So just because you can't automate something right now, or maybe there is a tool that will allow you to automate something, but it's cost prohibitive for you right now, that doesn't mean that's always going to be the case, right, so you could earmark that later.

Then you can really look at, alright, these are the things that already have systems and processes around them can't be automated. And I would like to outsource and then you really have all this information kind of right in front of you there. The reason that I still recommend setting up systems and processes and templates before, even if you're going to outsource for that thing, I still recommend doing that before because it's just going to save your hires time, whoever you hire, it's going to be faster and easier for them not only to learn how to do that thing, but also to continuous continuously do that thing over and over and over again, it's still gonna save them time when they're doing it every week or every month. And of course, you don't want to spend, you know, pay for more hours that are necessary to that person since it's more impactful if they can get more done. So that's why even if it's something you want to outsource, you still should set up systems and processes around that thing. First, so that you are then ensuring that whoever you do outsource to, you're really setting them up for success. That is going to make the whole onboarding, hiring and team building process so so much better and I'm speaking from experience here.

So that is what I have for you guys today. I hope this was really, really helpful. If you have any questions around, should I outsource this? Should I automate this? How the hell do I use Zapier for any of those things? Definitely hit me up on Instagram. I'm: Sam DiNicola on Instagram. If you have been enjoying the no fluff, small business simplified podcast, make sure you leave a review every single month. We are choosing one reviewer to win a free coaching call with me.

If you're really feeling lost around setting up systems and processes and templates around automating around outsourcing and hiring, guess what we can talk about in your free coaching call that you win all of those things, right? We can talk about all those things on your free coaching call that you win, but you're never gonna have that call that free call if you do not leave a review. So make sure you drop a review here. If you've been finding this helpful and share it with anyone else you think any other business owners you think might find this impactful for you. And I will see you next time on no fluff all been simplified.