Is a lack of systems costing my business?

A lot of the business owners who come to me are like a client of mine - let’s call her Laura.

Laura spent the first year of her business doing everything manually.

This meant:

• A custom invoice for each new client (and pricing that changed all the time too!)

• Writing new emails from scratch each time she needed to send a welcome or follow up

• Manually booking calls and Zoom meetings for everyone

• Constantly feeling overwhelmed by her admin tasks, and worrying that she was forgetting things and losing potential clients

Not having systems was really costing her business - both time and money! 

Let’s dive into how a lack of systems might be costing your business:

Listen to the audio:

The problem with a lack of systems

When you are running a business that doesn't have systems or it doesn't have the right systems, there is a not-so-invisible load that is really affecting your growth and the ease of your day-to-day operations. 

This lack of systems really impacts the way you run your business day-to-day, because it is probably making it pretty inefficient and stressful, and costing you time and money. Ultimately, a lack of systems really inhibits the growth of your business. 

Let’s take a look at the true costs.

Time

The first thing that happens when you have a lack of systems is that it is costing you valuable time. 

Let’s say you are spending a lot of your time on administrative tasks, putting out fires, and rushing around trying to keep up with the day-to-day. Instead, you could be spending that time on working one-on-one with a client, coming up with new ideas, or focusing on things that actually make money. 

Implementing systems and automation can take a lot of these administrative tasks off your plate or make it easier to outsource them to someone else so that you can spend time on the really important things in your business. 

You could also spend this time outside of your business doing leisure activities or spending time with family and friends, so that you don't feel like you are a slave to your business 24/7. 

Client experience

When your business has a lack of systems, the next thing that you tend to see is that it impacts your client experience. This can start as early as when a new lead is coming into your business. It means that they might wait longer to hear from you, leading them to move on to someone else. 

Or if they are a new client, it might take them longer to get more information, next steps, or pay you. 

Systems and automation can really help to support your clients and make them feel like they get fast communication from you, they always know the next step and what is expected from them in the process, and that they always have you there to support them along the way. 

Much of this can be done with little or no effort needed from you. This also means that you are going to have happier clients. Clients who want to return and work with you again, and who want to refer you on to other people because they had such a great, supportive experience from you. 

When you are doing everything manually when it comes to your client care, it means longer wait times and inconsistency, and it often means things like creating custom packages for each person that comes in. This is really inefficient and it's creating so much unnecessary work for you on the back end. You do not need to spend all of your time on client care when you can put systems in place to help do it for you! 

Income

One key issue with a business with no systems is that it's costing you money. When you think about the time that goes into all of these administrative tasks and things to keep your business going on a day-to-day basis, a lot of those tasks are things that do not directly make you money. 

If you have systems in place to take as many of these tasks off your plate as possible, you can then spend that additional time on those money-making tasks. Maybe you could take on another client. Maybe you could launch a new course or program. Maybe you could create digital products. There is so much that you could be doing with that additional time to make more money! 

The other thing that good systems do is elevate your business and make your business more professional. This means that perhaps you might be able to raise your prices or offer more premium services, because you have the infrastructure in place to support that and present the polished front that is needed to really sell those services. 

Growth

The bottom line is that if you are operating a business with no systems, or not enough systems, or not the right systems, the big issue that you're going to see is that it is going to inhibit or really slow down your business growth. 

It's going to limit the amount of clients you can take on or services that you can offer. The amount that you can do in a given day to make money or to move your business forward. The amount of time you have to work on new things that are going to grow your business and take it to the next level. It's going to really impact the experience that your clients have along the way working with you. 

If you really want to set yourself up to grow your business and really fulfill its potential, I recommend that you start setting up systems and getting those things in place as early as possible. Recognize that your systems are going to change and evolve along the way. 

I don't mean that you need to set up all these systems in the first week of your business and then that's going to set you up for life. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't. Anytime your offerings change, your target audience changes - there are a million reasons why your systems might need to change. 

But if you have that infrastructure in place and you're not starting from scratch every time, it's going to make it a lot easier and faster. And it means that you're going to have a solid foundation in place to grow your business and keep moving forward. 

If you have any questions about getting started with systems or improving the systems that you currently have, please leave a comment or feel free to reach out.