System One. You As The Anchor

Every business needs a foundation. As long as the business relies on your ability to show up, get things done, set a vision and follow through on it, you are the anchor for the business. You are the foundation of it all. That’s why this system must come first. If you are not functioning well, nothing else will.

The intention of this system is that everything is built in sync with all of the other parts of your business, with you at the core. System One is all about YOU! It's about who you are and how you work.

You might be on fire some days and a hot mess on others. Becoming more and more self aware is the key to this system. There comes a time when, regardless of where you are now, you need to be able to show up, tend to yourself, and ride your flow of energy to keep building momentum.

Don’t misread me here! This is NOT a call for perfection or a suggestion to plow through, regardless of what is happening in your life. This only means that you need to know yourself well enough for there to be sustainability built into how you show up for this work. If you are pushing hard all the time and end up in the burnout zone, time-and-time again, there needs to be greater self awareness to avoid this in the future.

Knowing yourself, understanding what you need, and how to give that to yourself is the way to build this foundation.

Adhoc

Based on your answers, your score indicates you may lack a consistent way of using your time effectively or making decisions, and may not know what this even looks like.

The following guiding questions and next steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What is your vision for your business?
• Why do you do what you do?
• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• When are you motivated to work?

Next Steps

1. Get to know yourself and your style better. Some recommended assessments include - Fascinate, 4 Tendencies, Strengths Finder, Kolbe A, Marketing DNA, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
2. Pay attention to your good days and your bad days. Make a list of what is present in your day on good days and what is present or missing on bad days.
3. Make a list of everything you need to do to take care of yourself so you operate from a solid foundation. Make a plan to build those into your daily flow.
4. Make sure that you are getting enough sleep every night.
5. Identify your ideal work week Include both the activities present and the timing for them.

Building

Your result indicates you are familiar about how your time is best used and are building confidence in decision making.

Guiding Questions

• What are areas where you can align similar tasks to batch certain types of work?
• What do you want your schedule during the day and throughout the week to look like?
• Get clear on your boundaries - when are you working and when are you not?
• Are there ways you see to improve your overall energy levels?

Next Steps

1. Get to know yourself and your style better: Fascinate, 4 tendencies, Strengths Finder, Kolbe A, Human Design, Marketing DNA, MBTI
2. Track your energy throughout the day - when are you high energy, low energy, medium energy? How can you align your work with your energy?
3. When do you do your best work? Make sure you’re doing the most important, highest value work that requires that level of energy.
4. Make a list of everything you want to be doing during a week and see if you can actually accomplish it from a time perspective. Make sure to build in transition times between activities.
5. Build a morning routine to start your day off on the right foot.

Working

You know your best flow daily and weekly, are clear in how you make decisions, and work this way most of the time.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you improve even more in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are subtle ways that your energy is undermined? What can you do to eliminate those?
• What areas of your life or business are being overlooked in the way you’re currently using your time and energy?
• Is there a level of greater alignment that you envision for yourself? How do you bring that to life?

Next Steps

1. Identify how you can improve the way your routines flow and how you’re currently getting work done.
2. Review how you take breaks - are there times during the day where you can take conscious rest periods in order to be more effective with your work time?
3. Track how you make decisions - when do you get confused? What kinds of decisions are most difficult for you?
4. Write out a boundary tracking document to reinforce good boundaries.

Excelling

You leverage your time and energy in the best ways possible, make decisions swiftly and confidently and follow these consistently.

Even though you are excelling in this area, there’s always still more room for improvement. The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps may serve to help you improve even more.

Guiding Questions

• What can be improved or optimized?
• What can be simplified?
• What are subtle ways that your energy is undermined? What can you do to eliminate those?

Next Steps

1. Install high level tracking to monitor your own activities and improve the way you’re using your time and energy.
2. Assess your decision making process and identify if there are areas where you can become more efficient in this area.
3. Think about what it would look like to maximize your energy and put a plan in place to get there.
4. Make a list of how you’re approaching your own tasks within the business. Are there gains or improvements to be made in specific areas?

System Two. Personal Organization & Planning

This is an area where a lot of business owners struggle. Especially with scheduling their time effectively, keeping their creative process and work style in mind.

How do you harness your magnificent energy and amplify its impact?

That is truly the outcome we are searching for in this system, so you get done what needs to be done, to do more of the work you love and to be taking steps towards what you want to create every day by aligning your actions with your vision.

I’ve seen clients go from being all over the place, having really lopsided weeks, where some are very full and others are not so full, and not planning - To always knowing what they are working on and when. With that clarity and freedom they know when they can take time off and don’t push themselves to the edge all of the time.

When we think about designing personal organization and planning, I often think about a river. How do you flow? What river banks need to be put in place that allow you to flow where you need to go? A river is not a river if it does not have banks to channel its energy. Half the battle with organization and planning is being clear about your vision and what you are working on, so that it creates these banks for your energy to flow through.

Adhoc

Based on your answers, your score indicates your personal organization and planning is ad hoc. Sometimes you spend more time digging for information than you’d like and your personal approach is sporadic.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What is the flow for your week? When are you at the highest energy and ability to get high value work produced?
• Where do you spin your wheels, unsure of where to go next?
• How are you currently planning your work flow? What could you do to improve this?
• Is it easy for you to manage your calendar and know where your time is going? If not, what can you put in place to manage this?

Next Steps

1. Set up a scheduling system so your clients can book directly without email back and forth.
2. Create a file structure and way of organizing your business information so it’s easy to access.
3. Determine on which areas of your business your time needs to be directed and how much you’ll spend.
4. Set up email filters.
5. Install a keystone. One place that tracks and points to all the things you need to be working on.
6. Do some reorganization. Clean up, file, and unsubscribe from emails. Do a cleanup of stuff that doesn’t get done day-to-day but starts to muck up workflow over time.
7. Install a password management system.

Building

Your result indicates that Your partially built system keeps the business organized your day-to-day schedule usually works and you engage in occasional high-level planning.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you improve even more in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can you say no to (or need to say no to) right now?
• Where are areas that could use strengthened boundaries? This could be between your work and personal life, what distracts you during your work day or how much time you’re spending on certain projects.
• What is your highest value work? How much time daily/weekly are you spending on it?
• What is the vision that propels you forward?

Next Steps

1. Build a plan and create guidelines so you work from your plan every day.
2. Create email templates to handle communications that happen frequently.
3. Set up a basic project management system.
4. Assess how you’re using your time and identify what is getting in the way of producing more value-added work.
5. Identify areas where you can strengthen your boundaries, build guidelines around them, and find several things to say no to.
6. Clarify and write down your vision. If you have a vision already, do an update pass to strengthen it.

Building

Your result indicates you have a planning process that works, and you are organized with business files to plan & track projects & progress.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you improve even more in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can you do to improve and further centralize your personal workflow?
• What is another layer you can put in place to automate your good habits?

Next Steps

1. Identify the next level of personal support you can outsource - this could be admin, calendaring - anything that will leverage your personal organization.
2. Build out your plans so they extend further out or do a pass to tighten up the timing of current plans.
3. Automate something that’s been on the back burner. *Pro Tip! Automation = When you don't have to think about it anymore, so automation does not always mean using technology. Sometimes it is just a quick checklist to go through, so you don't have to recall how to do something.
4. Build out personal SOPs.
5. Strengthen your planning and organization structures. Schedule out important planning days.
6. Build and implement a monthly review process.

Excelling

Your result indicates that you have a consistent planning process. You have one place for all business files, and one tool for managing your current workload and future projects. All are used to make tangible progress.

I celebrate you for excelling in this area! However, there’s always still more room for improvement. The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps may serve to help you improve even more.

Guiding Questions

• What does mastery level look like for your personal planning and organization habits? What would it mean to operationalize that?
• If you’re working with a team, how can you set them up to support your personal workflows in a stronger way?
• How can you infuse more of yourself in the way you operate?

Next Steps

1. Identify the area(s) that you want to be deepening into from a mastery perspective and build out a work plan to integrate them.
2. Identify the area(s) that you want to be deepening into from a mastery perspective and build out a work plan to integrate them.
3. Go back to a system that is built that feels like it could use streamlining or updating and determine what needs to change.

System Three. Foundations

This system takes a look at your business foundations. It includes areas such as legal, tax, business structure, insurance and backups.

Having all this in place is key for your business to thrive. It’s important because these parts create the energetic container for your work. Good news! You generally only have to figure out these pieces once and then they run in the background with minimal maintenance.

This stuff might seem kind of dry, but I’ve talked to a lot of business owners who have this feeling like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Once this stuff is in place, they have confidence about the container for their business and relax into a confidence about what they are creating, knowing that their business is supported in all the ways it needs to be.

Adhoc

Based on your answers, your score indicates that your business foundations are wanting. You have few if any backup systems, you may have no contracts or other agreements - or if you do they are not solid, you haven’t thought about the best structure for your business, and although you probably do your business taxes - overall it might feel like you're flying by the seat of your pants.

The following guiding questions and next steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• When is the right time to hire a CPA to handle your business taxes?
• What could you put into place to better manage your taxes?
• In terms of legal, taxes, business entity, insurance, and backups, what is the highest priority to focus on right now?

Next Steps

1. Look into hiring a CPA to help you with your business taxes.
2. Research if the business needs any type of insurance.
3. Research what legal agreements need to be put in place to protect all aspects of the business.
4. Download an app to your phone to keep track of your receipts for your business spending.

Building

Your result indicates that your foundations are in process, however you update them, inconsistently. You have at least one backup, use some legal agreements, work with a CPA, and have a business structure that’s not formalized.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you improve even more in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Do your business backups happen automatically? If no, what needs to happen to put that in place?
• What legal agreements are you missing? What will you do to get them created?

Next Steps

1. Confirm what legal structure would be best for your business. Set up a new type of entity if it’s needed.
2. Make a list of the legal agreements that you’re still missing for the business and create a plan to get them in place.
3. Sign up accounting/bookkeeping software to manage your tax data.
4. Set up business backups that stay up-to-date automatically.
5. If you don’t already have all your business files backed up, get something in place.

Building

Your result indicates our foundations are nearly complete, and you have consistent backups. All aspects of the business are covered by agreements, you are working with a CPA and you are doing some proactive planning. Overall, you are confident in the structure of the business.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you improve even more in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can you do to streamline the legal, tax, insurance, and backup functions in the business?
• Are there any areas of your business where you can strengthen the legal aspects (copyrights, trademarks, additional agreements)?
• Are there any aspects of your business’ entity that are unclear? If so, what do you need to do to understand it better?
• What do you think needs to work better in these areas?

Next Steps

1. Talk to your CPA about doing proactive business financial planning.
2. Set up a secondary backup mechanism. If you back up to the cloud, get a physical drive to backup to and vice versa.
3. If you don’t have insurance, is there any types of insurance that would be beneficial (e.g. E&O, individual insurance, cyber insurance, general liability).
4. Get any areas covered legally that may still be lacking agreements or legal documentation.

Excelling

Your result indicates your foundations are rock solid! You run multiple backups, have custom agreements for all parts of the business, work with a CPA and proactively plan, and your legal business structure is formalized, stable and working. Congratulations!

I celebrate you for excelling in this area! However, there’s always still more room for improvement. The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps may serve to help you improve even more.

Guiding Questions

• What can you do to take your legal, tax, insurance, and backup functions in the business to the next level?
• Does anything need to shift with the business’ entity (e.g. if you’re an LLC taxed as an individual, do you need to be taxed as an S-Corp)?

Next Steps

1. Have custom agreements written for your key legal agreements.
2. Work with your CPA on a quarterly basis to proactively plan each quarter for your tax needs.

System Four. Financial Management

The system of financial management is the one that my clients most avoid, especially since a lot of them feel that they don’t have a good handle on this - even with great cash flow. They worry about what they will find, but especially in this system, knowledge is power.

When you know where you stand, you can make conscious choices about where you are heading. When you take control of this, you know what you can spend your money on. You’ll know how to stay within budget and set aside enough money for all the important facets of your business while paying yourself first.

As with any of the systems in your business there is a continuum of development with financial management and wherever you are is where you are. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Money is the lifeblood of the company. It is key to have full awareness of where it is going. Financial management is about bringing full awareness and full responsibility to the finances of your company.

Being a business owner is about tracking those components and getting support where needed.

Adhoc

On the to-do list is to track finances and set a business budget — you currently have all personal and business transactions come from the same bank account.

The following guiding questions and next steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What feels confusing from a financial management standpoint? What can you research or who can you reach out to and schedule time to receive support?
• Do you have a process in place to manage the financial aspects of your business? If not, what might this look like? If so, how can you build on it?
• What does financial management mean to you? Are there areas that having a clear financial process would help you?
• What’s something that you can build today that would be useful and support the way you handle business finances?

Next Steps

1. Build a simple business budget.
2. Implement a way to accept customer payments online.
3. Set up automatic payments for anything business related.
4. Set up a system to track your expenses. You might install an app or otherwise figure out a system to save receipts.
5. Figure out how much you need to be putting aside for taxes and create an account to keep those funds separate.
6. Separate out your personal & business bank accounts.

Building

Your results show that you have a basic system to track revenue and expenses, it’s easy to send invoices, you have a rough business budget sketched out and you use a separate business bank account.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are your financial goals? How are you tracking progress towards them?
• What measures or controls can you put in place to strengthen your cash position?
• What area of your business finances could use additional support?
• How are you currently measuring your progress and identifying learnings to improve over time?

Next Steps

1. Create a spreadsheet of all your business expenses and include monthly/annual cost, when the service renews, payment dates and any notes about the service. This is a great opportunity to identify what you’re using/not using.
2. Create a financial tracking system (income, expenses, payments).
3. Set up a bookkeeping system (like QuickBooks, FreshBooks or Xero) that you’ll run or hire someone to run.
4. Set up a framework to batch all financial activities on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
5. Do your research to hire a CPA (and then prepare to hire them).

Working

You have a system for financial reporting, payments are on autopilot, the business runs from a budget and there’s a system that auto allocates revenue into different bank accounts.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What financial controls do you have in place that automatically reinforce your goals and build towards them?
• How can you strengthen your reserves?
• Do you have all your financial processes SOPd? What needs to happen and when from a financial perspective? Are you tracking this somewhere so it consistently gets done?

Next Steps

1. Set up a system to run monthly financial reviews (to include budget reviews, cash position, plans for the upcoming month and ensure payments are set).
2. Get a system in place to do bi-annual or quarterly reviews with your CPA or financial advisor.
3. Build out your business budget so it’s like an annual financial plan for your business.
4. Implement a system (such as the Profit First methodology) that auto allocates your revenue into different accounts for better financial control.

Excelling

Your financial systems hum — bookkeeper runs monthly reports, always know where the business is at financially, budget is consistently on track.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are stones that feel unturned when it comes to your business finances?
• What is an area or two that needs improvement relating to your business finances?
• Is there a next set of goals that you are reaching for?

Next Steps

1. Build a trailing twelve-month (TTM) report.
2. Identify a plan of action to keep more of your revenue and pay less tax.
3. Review your offerings/products and run a financial analysis on each to determine if they lead to financial sustainability.
4. Set up a process to create and review monthly financial reports.

System Five. Setup Marketing Procedures

This is the system to get the word out about your work, educate your market and build relationships.

Marketing is service, just as much as sales and delivery is, which we address in the next two systems.

The challenge with marketing is often the sheer number of opportunities that exist in where and how you can get the word out and connect with people.

When you are solid in your marketing system, it is so much easier to ignore trends and gimmicks that can tend to draw us all in, and instead focus on those areas that make the biggest difference for your business.

You will be able to continuously build your community and trust that you are reaching the right people who will be a good fit to work with and buy from your business.

Adhoc

Getting started — you're not sure of your ideal customer or message, don’t have an email list or a system to put yourself in front of prospective clients/customers, and you probably don’t know where you need to be marketing and aren’t in the planning phases yet.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Where do you really want to market your offerings?
• What would be the most powerful way to market your offerings - are there any skills you need to develop to do this effectively?
• How much time a week do you have to market? In that time, what needs to get done?

Next Steps

1. Do research on your ideal client so you can figure out where they hang out and how you can reach them effectively.
2. Dial in your message of what you are offering and tie it into the needs and desires of your ideal clients.
3. Sign up for an email service so you can start building your email list.
4. Do a strategic brainstorm of where you would market yourself (1-2 channels that you might commit to consistently showing up in).

Building

Build phase — you have a pretty good idea of your target market and message, email your list ad hoc, sometimes get customers from your marketing and are building towards consistently marketing and planning.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What would it look like to focus on one area of marketing and dial in the operations for it?
• Have you mapped your marketing process from start to finish? Do you know what all the key steps are?
• What is one area of your marketing process that you can improve that would create major gains for you?

Next Steps

1. Do a strategic brainstorm about how you are going to list build and then pick one tactic to focus on and create a plan for implementation.
2. Build an email marketing plan for the next 3 months and book time in your calendar to execute it.
3. Create a marketing framework that covers topics of discussion and your channels of focus.
4. Get clear on what your marketing approach is going to be (what channels you’ll focus on, what it will take to execute it, and if there’s anything you need to know to succeed here).
5. Figure out what you need to do to be ahead of the curve in your marketing and not just doing it as it needs to go out.

Working

Expansion phase — your target market is clear, you communicate with your list strategically, you’re marketing in specific channels and getting results, and are planned out 3-6 months.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Is there anything that can be better tracked from a marketing perspective?
• How are your marketing SOPs? Any holes in the marketing process from start to finish?
• Is there anything you could build that would make the marketing process more streamlined or better supported?
• How can you build on the existing infrastructure in a way that doesn’t add massive complexity?

Next Steps

1. Plan out your next 1-2 quarters of marketing content and build out any actions and a timeline in your calendar/project management system to support the execution of the plan.
2. Do a strategic review of all of your marketing channels and determine what’s working really well and what needs work.
3. If you don’t already have a place where you track your key marketing metrics, put together a tracking mechanism and a schedule where you will update metrics + review for insight.
4. Determine if there are any additional areas where you can create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and potentially delegate work.

Excelling

Market leader phase — your clear target market is consistently educated & nurtured, email list is segmented and is a reliable source of revenue, marketing is planned out, often a year in advance and this system produces excellent results.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can be improved or optimized?
• Where are the levers located to grow what you are already doing?
• What can be simplified?

Next Steps

1. Review reports from your primary marketing channels to determine if there are areas that can be improved or grown.
2. Build in a new level of automation, engagement, or segmentation into your marketing program that’s been on the back burner.
3. Improve the way marketing is done - review your processes, how your team interfaces with the marketing and supports its growth.
4. Assess if your marketing is enough to reach your goals, if not, assess if there are ways to grow your existing channels or determine if an additional channel is needed.

System Six. Your Sales Framework

Let’s get paid! Sales is a clear path that allows your market to pay you and create a benefit exchange through the form of currency. A solid sales system includes clear workflow, tracking and the technology that powers it. Also, did I mention to make sure you make it easy for people to pay you?!

When we talk about sales, I think about the words currency and exchange. There’s inherently the presence of value being passed from one person to another.

I’ve reflected a lot about what currency is, in nature. Is it water? Is it sunlight? Although I haven’t landed on a solid decision, I am leaning more toward water because there is a flow and a transition from state-to-state as it passes from person-to-person. Do you have any thoughts on this? Please share with me at hello@opsinsync.com. I would love to expand my perspective!

All that aside, a sales system is the best way to get that company lifeblood into your business!

With a solid sales system you will KNOW that you can be paid - even when you’re not at your computer. Business owners who have this dialed-in enjoy long weekends with their hands full of doing what they love (e.g. running, yoga, reading a favorite book). Money is coming in, even when they’re not actively working!

Adhoc

You have an ad hoc approach to sales, take sales when they come, feel unclear about pricing and lack any real support framework.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What do you really want to offer?
• Are there areas in your offerings that have question marks next to them? What are those? Take some time to get your questions answered
• Who do you love to work with?
• Do you have an offer or offers defined that are a great overlap of your skills, what you love to do and what is most beneficial for the people you work with?

Next Steps

1. Experiment with offers - see what people respond to, what they buy.
2. Schedule calls with people who are potential clients for you and host informational calls to gather data about your market and their needs.
3. Define your target market - who they are, what their needs are and what outcomes they desire.
4. Write your current offers down, who they’re for, the outcomes they provide, the price for each, and pick one to focus on and dial in.
5. If you don’t have this already, make it easy for people to pay you.

Building

You're building a set of offerings for a specific market, can easily take payment and have a reliable method of handling sales, there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, but everything works.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What would it look like to focus on one area of sales or one offering and dial in the operations for it?
• Do you know what your core offers are? Is it easy to talk about them with your ideal customers?
• Have you mapped your sales process from start to finish? Do you know what all the key steps are?
• What is one area of your sales process that you can improve that would create major gains for you?

Next Steps

1. Clarify core offers - what they are, the pricing, the outcomes delivered.
2. Create a consistent sales process for your core offers.
3. Run a capacity assessment to determine how much time you have for product/service delivery and if you’re running a service-based business, if the pricing is correctly set based on your availability and financial goals.
4. Build a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for your sales process so you can continue to refine and improve it.
5. Create a basic tracking document to look at your revenue week-to-week and month-to-month.

Working

Your sales process is stable, reliable, well-tracked, and you feel confident and comfortable with it as you’re now building upon it as a foundation.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Is there anything that can be better tracked from a sales perspective?
• How are your sales SOPs? Any holes in communicating the sales process from start to finish?
• Is there anything you could build that would make the sales process more streamlined or better supported?
• How can you build on the existing infrastructure in a way that doesn’t add massive complexity?

Next Steps

1. Look at your metrics and hone in on one area that could stand to be improved, create the parameters for this improvement and map an action plan.
2. Map your offerings - are there holes anywhere in terms of how you can potentially support your clients?
3. Review your sales processes, how your team interfaces with sales and supports its growth - what is still sticky?
4. Detail out the journey your prospects and clients move through - is there anything that can be changed / removed / added to improve their experience?
5. Build on your sales tracking document to track conversion rates and determine where in the sales process improvements can be made (either for sales/product pages, or sales calls).

Excelling

Your sales process is dialed in and you’re building on it through in-depth tracking, advanced strategies and focused on lifetime value.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can be improved or optimized?
• Where are the levers located to grow what you are already doing?
• What can be simplified?
• What are a few areas where you could build in advanced strategies?

Next Steps

1. Review reports from your primary revenue streams to determine if there are areas that can be improved or grown.
2. Build in a new level of automation, engagement, or segmentation into your sales process.
3. Assess if your sales is poised to help you hit your goals. If not, assess if there are ways to grow your existing revenue streams or determine if additional offers are needed.
4. Run a life cycle analysis and determine where you can build in additional lifecycle value for your client base.

System Seven. Path to Delivery

Most business owners I work with, already have an awesome delivery system. It might not be everything they envision but their clients get good results, they love the work they do, and they're always improving their skills.

Often the opportunity in the delivery process is found in streamlining and clarifying exactly what you do, which can get even more consistent results!

As this happens you find freedom from wondering if you remembered to send someone an email or if your session reminders went out while you're hanging out with friends or on a date.

This is about you taking back your time.

Adhoc

Your delivery on the whole is ad hoc, different packages, different ways of supporting and don’t have a consistent way of serving your market.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Of the delivery methods/styles you have tried, what works the best for you and what produces the greatest results?
• Of your current offerings, which put you most in your zone of genius?
• Which area of your delivery could use the most attention to get it working better?

Next Steps

1. Write out an overview of what your offerings are - what you deliver, how you engage with your clientele, the price for each and how long they take to deliver - identify the highest value offerings both from your perspective and the perspective of your customers.
2. What kind of support do your clients/customers need?
3. Document the kinds of outcomes you create for your clients/customers - why do they love working with you? What do they receive?
4. What do you love doing for your clients/customers? Make a list.

Building

You generally serve each client in the same way with similar results and are able to understand their issues and how to address them.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can you do to ensure you have enough time to both deliver your products/services and handle all the other support that your business needs?
• What are some areas in your delivery process that could be improved for your clients/customers? Think about how they receive their service/product, what kind of support they get and how you ensure they get the desired experience with the business

Next Steps

1. Sit down and work out your capacity - how much time can you spend in delivery mode and how much do you need to be spending on the other areas in your business?
2. Document your customer service procedures.
3. Create an offering map - how long each offering takes to deliver, what it entails and how much you can charge for it. What makes sense to focus on?
4. Map out your delivery process - what are the steps, what needs to happen and when, and how can you make sure you do it the same way every time.
5. Set up a system to get testimonials and feedback from the clients you work with - bonus points: if you’re missing any testimonials, go back and get them from clients you’ve worked with in the past.

Working

Your delivery systems are coming together and you’re able to focus on improving customer/client outcomes and are receiving support in the areas you can outsource.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• How can you dial in your delivery to the next level? What can you shift/improve/add/subtract to make the experience even better?
• Are there areas you can improve communication with your clients at any point during the process?
• As you look at the list of what you deliver to your clients/customers, where are there holes? Are there service or product areas that will round out their experience and offer greater support?

Next Steps

1. Create a wish list for what you want your next level of delivery to look like and build a plan to bring it to life.
2. Review your delivery procedures for all your offerings/products and determine what will improve the experience, both internally and for your clients/customers.
3. Confirm that all the parts of your delivery process (onboarding, shipping, customer service) are written up in Standard Operating Procedures. If anything is missing or out of date, write up a plan to get it done.
4. Set up a project to speak to a cross-section of your customers/clients to find out what you’re doing really well and what you can improve. Make a plan to put these recommendations into place.
5. Analyze the cost-of-service delivery (time and cash).
6. Set up a customer service platform to handle support requests if support volume requires it.

Excelling

Your customers love working with you for the results you deliver, you know exactly how many you can serve and what support you need to do it well.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can be improved or optimized?
• Where are the levers located to grow what you are already doing?
• What can be simplified?

Next Steps

1. Continuously improve your products/services - monitor and identify where improvements can be made.
2. Do an analysis of all your products/services and the customer experience to see where you can improve the overall delivery and put a plan in place to get it done.
3. Analyze your delivery workflows and see if there are any areas you can delegate to team members.
4. Review all your services/offerings/products and see if there are optimizations to make in terms of what you focus on selling most/least.

System Eight. Fostering a Strong Team Environment

While I personally love everything about systems, if someone were to ask me what my favorite system is, it would be this! Our teams are the backbone of everything we do, and the success we achieve.

Ultimate growth and impact happen through the support of a team because they enable you to work on what only you do best, or choose to do, while they take everything else off of your plate. It is a symbiotic relationship for managing the business.

If you are doing a lot of work that you do not like, and you feel like your business is sometimes sucking the life out of you, this is the system for you!

Once you have solidified your support, you can step away from doing the things you don’t love doing. You get valuable brain space back that you can utilize towards more meaningful work! Can I get a “Oh, heck yeah?!”

When it comes to building teams there are all sorts of pieces to be clear about, related to hiring, planning, communications, and management. What do you want your team to be accountable and responsible for?

Wait a second! Before we even get there, are you clear about what you LOVE to do in the business - or what ONLY you can truly do? Keep these responsibilities. However, start today in working toward delegating your other work to people that love “that” type of work.

Don’t have a team yet? I suggest answering the questions in this system based on how ready you feel you are to take on a team. Or you can also answer all questions with “Not At All”, because then you will get the help you would need to start to build a great team.

Adhoc

As you’re getting up and running, you improvise and take an ad hoc approach to getting things done and occasionally you hire an outside contractor for help.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are the things you love doing in your business? What are the things that drain your energy and could be better handled by someone else?
• What are the tasks in your business that you do every day, week or month? Can you easily write down the steps you take to get things done?
• Are there areas that you would like to learn about delegating and outsourcing? Where can you find those resources?

Next Steps

1. Create a list of the stuff you love doing in your business and the stuff you don’t - from this list you can start to think about what you would delegate to a team member.
2. For the things you do consistently in your business (even if it’s only an email newsletter), start to build out a library of standard operating procedures.
3. Get into the habit of writing down the way you do things in your business so you have a resource to hand over to someone when you are ready to hire support.
4. Make a list of the areas in business that are not your zone of genius and look at how you can get those areas supported (this could be marketing, PR, tech, etc.).
5. Research and read resources about hiring and managing teams.

Building

There are a couple areas in the business you handle in a consistent way and may have an assistant on board to help you run the day-to-day part time. You're starting to hand off work that someone else can do for you.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• When will you know that it’s the right time to hire someone?
• What do you want your hiring process to look like? Can you write down what all the steps of this might be?
• What are your expectations for your team? How do you need them to support you - not only from a task perspective, but how will they check in and communicate about the work?

Next Steps

1. Create a library in a centralized place that is accessible online (like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or something similar) and build a template that you will always use to support any standard operating procedures in the business.
2. Set up a project management system that you will use to manage your work that contractors and employees can use to work on your business.
3. Build out your files in a place where any business support can access what they need without you having to dig out files and email them back and forth.
4. Write a job description for the area(s) in your business that most need support and seek strong candidates.
5. Research what the hiring process looks like and build out your own system for this.
6. Look into the Kolbe A Index and get a reflection of your work style so you can understand what type of support will best complement your style.

Working

You see and experience the importance (and difference!) in having procedures built out to maintain a level of quality and efficiency of running the business with a couple team members.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can you build to get your project management system working better?
• Are there any areas in your centralized file system that could be better organized or consolidated? What will it take to do an upgrade?
• What are ways you can improve team communications?
• What structures will allow your team to thrive?

Next Steps

1. If there are any areas of your business that are not managed in your project management system, build them out.
2. Create a one-page business plan so that team members understand the big vision and where the business is headed.
3. Continue to build out your files and structure them in a way that makes it easy for your team to work with them.
4. Train your team on how to build SOPs and have them build SOPs for anything new in the business that they manage or that needs to be managed.
5. Create a plan for the team to work from so they understand where the business is going and how they will support it to get there.
6. Set up structures to meet with your team members on a regular basis so you’re in sync with what is being done in the business.

Excelling

You understand how leveraging your teams’ genius allows you to leverage yours and maintain clear structure, communication and process for an effective working environment.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Where are there bottlenecks that need to be eliminated?
• What improvements could be made to improve the way your team functions?
• What can you do to bring your team into greater alignment?
• What is your vision for your team's growth and development?
• What is your vision for yourself as a leader?

Next Steps

1. Ask your support team to look at the key processes they manage and have them assess what can be improved.
2. Ask your support team to identify areas they think can use additional support and have them share how they can help or what kind of support they think is needed.
3. Have your team build out a list of SOPs that still need to be created and have them create a plan to get these completed.
4. Have your team members build plans for each of their focus areas in alignment with the overall business goals.
5. Have your team members each create personal goals to support the business and a plan about how they are going to get there.
6. Build out a plan to develop your team over the coming year.

System Nine. Measure & Learn From Metrics

Metrics is the final of the 9-Key Systems because they touch all of the systems in your business. Metrics can feel like they are going to take a lot of effort and time, but I suggest just keeping things simple - especially if you’re just getting started.

I know you might be thinking - “Metrics Tracking?? Do I really have to? This is the last thing I want to be doing with my time!!”

I get it. This isn’t the most exciting thing in the world for you to spend your precious time on. However - remember the MOST successful businesses know their numbers! Knowing and not guessing presents a huge opportunity to have peace of mind. Don’t let your business growth - or lack thereof - come from guessing!

An easy way to get started is to find the most important 2 - 3 metrics which impact your business. If you do direct sales calls, it might be the number of calls and your close rate. If you sell things online, this might be traffic and your conversion rate.

The key with metrics is to get into the habit of tracking them without getting overwhelmed while get the info that you need to make smart decisions.

Metrics tell you what is working - and what is not working.

Adhoc

Tracking metrics is a foreign land for you and the effort to put in and learn it won’t yet reap the rewards of the time investment.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are the most important things you need to know about the business’ numbers?
• What are the areas that drive business for you? How might you think about tracking and growing these areas?

Next Steps

1. Set up a simple sales pipeline tracking sheet - track who you talk to, when, what you offered them. You can also do this with software like Pipedrive if you prefer a system that’s already created that you can work within. If you have an online store, track number of sales, where they’re coming from, cart conversion and cart abandonment percentages.
2. Install Google tracking on your website.
3. Install any tracking codes on your site for advertising purposes, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
4. Brainstorm all of the areas that have the biggest impact on your business - is it number of phone calls, website traffic, number of podcasts that you’re on - what drives business?

Building

You understand that looking at a couple key numbers can guide smart decision making and support a positive business trajectory.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What are the key numbers for you to pay attention to in your business? How often do you need to look at them?
• Are there reports that you need to pay attention to and review on a consistent basis to see how you’re progressing in key areas of the business?

Next Steps

1. Create a basic tracking sheet where you can look at the most important, high-level numbers in the business. These might be traffic, list sizes, revenue, margins, conversion rates, individuals supported. Pick 2-3 to track that will take you less than 15 minutes when you do it.
2. Do research on basic metrics to understand what’s important to track in the business and why.
3. Write a basic process that you can use on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis to run your numbers and begin to track your data over time.
4. Block time in your calendar at a consistent frequency to update your reports and look at how things are trending.
5. Set one metric-related goal.
6. Learn what metrics act like levers in your business and begin to think about those as guidelines for decision-making.

Working

You have a few key metrics that you rely on to tell you what’s working and what's not and consistently use these as a guide for decision making.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• Are there any areas in your metrics or reporting processes that are sticky? How can you improve them?
• What would make your reporting or metrics more robust?
• Are there any parts of this process that you can delegate?

Next Steps

1. Brainstorm areas to build out additional tracking if it’s needed - it could be advanced website traffic metrics, how many people see ads, conversion rates on specific sales pages - think about what’s currently invisible and work to make it visible.
2. Set goals in relation to your existing numbers and build out strategies and plans to help you reach those goals.
3. Write procedures about collecting data so you can hand it off to a team member and have their insight in reports along with yours.
4. Set up at least one KPI (Key Performance Indicator) as a main driver of business - this might be sales, traffic or some other number that greatly impacts the trajectory of the business.
5. Create a process that allows you to review the numbers and use them as an indicator or guideline in identifying where you can grow your business.

Excelling

You know what numbers drive which desired business outcomes, trust them as a decision-making tool, and regularly review and take action from them.

The following Guiding Questions and Next Steps will help you make strides in this area.

Guiding Questions

• What can be improved or optimized?
• Where are the levers located to grow what you are already doing?
• What can be simplified?
• What are a few areas where you could build-in advanced strategies?

Next Steps

1. Assess if there are better tracking systems that you need to put in place to take the business to the next level.
2. Create a numbers dashboard that a team member can update daily or weekly so you can keep the business on track.
3. Set a few numbers related goals - they can be monthly or yearly (or both) - and make sure you have a plan to keep these trending in the right direction.
4. Use your Key Performance Indicator(s) to be a guide and keep a high-level of focus on what’s prioritized in the business.
5. Do a numbers clean up - is there anything missing? Anything that seems extra that doesn’t drive the business to serve in the way you want?