Episode – 007- 3 Signs You Have Outgrown Your Current Business Systems
Is it time to upgrade your systems? Are you ready to be the CEO? Then it may be time to consider a serious upgrade to avoid 1) burnout, 2) a huge mess that can affect the quality of your work.
It’s easy to stay in the comfort zone where you know the ins and outs of the tools and systems you use, but does that actually help you be the CEO?
In this episode, I’m sharing with you 3 examples + what to do if you are in real need of a business overhaul.
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Full transcription
Hello and welcome to Episode 7 of the Online Business Tech Hub, this is Alessia your host, tech expert for online courses and consultants, on a mission to rescue my clients from tech disasters.
Today’s episode is about 3 things you might want to take a look at when it’s time to upgrade your business systems. So the thing is that I have also found myself in the same situation.
So, you know, if you find yourself in the same situation, you’re not the only one.
The thing is that when you have been in business for a while, you have been using certain systems and software and you have become quite familiar with them. But what happens when you kind of get the feeling that they start to become a bit too tight for you? It starts to become clunky. Maybe there is quite a lot of manual work, maybe you are craving for something else, but you might not even know what that something else is. So at that point, it’s time to upgrade your systems because you want to avoid, for one, burnout.
You want to avoid doing a lot of manual work that takes your focus away from what is important, but also what you want to avoid. And this is really common when this happens. Your back end might be a huge, tangled mess that can actually affect the quality of your work with your clients.
It’s really easy to stay in the comfort zone where you know all the ins and outs of the tools and software that you’ve been using. But does that actually help you be the CEO if you are using the same software as you used to when you started out, that they, for example, require a lot of manual work, then if you feel like it, you need to step up and actually be the CEO, then one of the things to look at is definitely an upgrade of your systems and software.
Let me give you some examples of what this means regarding e-mail marketing platforms, if you started out with MailChimp and you’ve been in business for several years and you’re still using MailChimp, besides the fact that you are probably wasting so much money on that.
But if you have a lot of lead magnets, a lot of e-mail series and email automations, and maybe you have online courses, MailChimp is a bit basic for an established business because it’s a bit clunky, it’s messy, it’s limiting.
So when you want to have a proper automated funnel that upsells and downsells different products or offers that you have, it’s very limiting. There are other platforms out there, for example, Active Campaign or ConvertKit that actually lets you create automations and rules that are triggered when certain conditions present themselves. And they are absolutely wonderful platforms that can help you automate a lot of procedures from the sales point of view.
Talking about sales, another example I want to give you is if you still yourself have to do a lot of manual work. Doing manual work at the beginning of your business is totally normal. I did it myself and everyone did it. OK, maybe you have a VA that still handles this manual work manual tasks like, for example, creating invoices. But if you are aiming at upgrading your business and going to that next level, invoices, for example, is something that you can easily automate.
So each time you get a payment, your invoicing software automatically generates an invoice. And then maybe your VA or you, if you don’t have a VA, can go and check that everything is correct before it is sent. But that saves you already quite a lot of time. Or if you send a welcome package to your clients, if you do one-to-one sessions, and you send like an onboarding package, your welcome package to your clients, you can do that manually.
But there are also systems that let you do that on autopilot by creating workflows and everything is done automatically. And that saves you so much time when you are at a certain level or when you really want to go to that next level and actually want to focus on, you know, delivering to your clients and working with them and really making a difference.
That’s what you need to look at, removing the manual worker and focusing more on automations. Even if you have team members, even if you have a VA, what can be automated is worth automating because if you’re paying your VA by the hour and you have your VA doing things that you could easily automate, then this means that you can have your VA help you with tasks where there is a real need for the presence of a person doing the work.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is if your backend is messy and this is a very common problem. What do I mean by your backend is messy?
So you started ago and you accumulated lots of tools and software and maybe you have accumulated those lifetime deals on AppSumo and you have a lot of unused apps or software that maybe you use them a little bit and then you left them behind. Maybe you have your invoices on zero, maybe you have your free resources in Google Drive. Agreements with your clients are on Hello Sign or any other signature software. You have a lot of e-mail series, e-mail automations, with a lot of broken links, because maybe you created those opt-ins, you have those free resources many years ago and they are still running and there are broken links and people keep signing up to those and they can’t access the resources you are sharing because the links are broken.
So this is so common when you are growing when you go to that next level. This is absolutely common. And my approach when I start to work with a client who wants to really streamline their backend is to do an inventory of all the tools they use all the time, an inventory of the tools that you sign up for, that you have your lifetime deals with AppSumo and then start to investigate.
If this software, these tools are actually helping you, do they require a lot of manual work? Could you automate some tasks?
What would you like to automate? What would you need to automate and what is it that actually needs to be done manually because it requires more control. For example, invoices in Italy, depend on the type of company or sole proprietorship you are. There are different levels and therefore the invoices can be different depending on which status you have. So there are some things that can be automated and some things that actually must be done manually.
Once you have clarity over what needs manual work, once you have clarity over what can be automated, then you can outsource, you can hire a team member to deal with these tasks. You can invest in a professional that can help you streamline your procedures and automate them. And in this way, when your structures, when you’re backend, your procedures is very clean and streamlined, you will never find yourself in a situation where you need a specific document and you have no idea where it is because you have something on Google Drive, something on Dropbox.
The agreements are here, the invoices are in another platform, and so on.
OK, once you have clarity of what you need and once you have clear structures, it will be so much easier for you to manage your business being the CEO, but also grow to that next level, grow higher.
So this is a very short episode, but I felt like it was really important to talk about it because this is a question I get really often. How do you understand when it’s time to grow, to go to the next level, and upgrade all these situations I mentioned today?
For example, your email marketing platform, the manual work you’re doing, and your backend may have a direct negative impact on your business, you might be delayed in providing invoices.
You might waste a lot of time looking for what you need in the backend. A clunky marketing platform doesn’t really help you keep your ideal clients and your followers in mind. So keep these things in mind. If you are at that point where you feel like that, maybe you need to upgrade your current systems and business tools.
And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button to get your ears onto the latest episodes as soon as they are published.
And also, don’t forget to Kick Start Your Email Marketing my free 5-day email course where I show you the ins and outs of the best email marketing platforms so you can get started with no overwhelm, no waste of money, and no waste of time. You find all the links in the show notes.
That’s it for today. I’ll talk to you next week.
Bye-bye.