You have a passion for helping people, you’re a web designer. You know you’re good and have been told that you should start a business. You know you’ll attract lots of clients who want to an affordable web presence that functions well and is aesthetically pleasing. You get your business entity, a logo, business cards, and put up a great website where your clients can learn about, and pay for your services. You even get a payment processor and you’re ready to start doing what you love. You start taking clients, and at first it’s great! You’re making money and doing what you love. But in year three, you start to realize that you’re working really long hours and that you don’t take any time off. Your laptop goes everywhere you go and you never really turn off. Clients request more services, products, and items that you know will complement your business, but you don’t have time to even work on any of them.  You are giving more with less to show for it.

What did you do wrong? How do you fix it? Can you continue at this pace?

Well, I didn’t do anything wrong, necessarily, I just didn’t think through how I was going to run my business. It took me some time to fix, but YES, its was fixable. And no, I couldn’t continue at that pace.

It’s common for a lot of businesses to start off this way. If you’re like me, you didn’t go to business school. I figured I had passion and purpose, I’m smart, and I understood my industry, so surely I could run a business! Back then I had a great website, but social media didn’t exist. Didn’t I have the most critical tools l needed to be successful?

Unfortunately, no I didn’t! There are so many things I didn’t know. Things that I didn’t learn in any of my college classes or even from working in Corporate America.  After getting to the point of exhaustion and frustration, I knew intuitively that something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to fix it. That’s what led to my burn out.

I was missing a good system! 

Let me first define what I mean by a system. (This is my definition.)

A system is a way of doing business that is clearly communicated to the client, that helps the business function smoothly and efficiently. It sets up clear boundaries on how all transactions in the business are executed and communicated, including pricing. Additionally, it allows the business owner to be taken out of the equation, and the business will still be able to function smoothly and efficiently.   

I don’t care what you do, you MUST have a system! If you don’t have one, you will quickly burn yourself out and you will come to resent your clients. Two things you don’t want to do! This is exactly what happened to me. I was so burned out that when my clients contacted me I didn’t even want to do what I loved to do. I wanted to get as far away from doing web design as I could because my system was broken and I didn’t know it. I was blaming my clients when it was me that had failed to put a good system in place, one that had boundaries for how I wanted to be interacted with, paid for, and communicated with. Its your business! You have to teach people how YOU want to be treated. Clients will learn your system and that’s how they will work with you. And the ones that don’t want to adhere to your system?  Well, they’re not your client. Period.

So let’s discuss how to put a good system in place, so you can prevent burnout, start playing bigger, AND preserve your sanity!

1. Write down what you do. I mean EVERY SINGLE TASK you do to service your clients.  A great way to get it all out of your head is to create a mindmap. I suggest using a great tool like Freemind or Coggle, but if you’re not ready to go hi-tech, then pencil and paper will also do.

2.  Write down how you do it. You won’t want to do it, but its great if you can do this in a step-by-step way so you can truly SEE how you do your work. In UX, I call this a workflow. When you’re new in business you may not even be aware that you have a workflow, but every service that you offer has one. It’s what you do to get something done in the business. Look at every single thing that you do in the business and document how you do it. Trust me it will be eye-opening. If you just provide one service, then you just need one workflow. But if you have multiple services, you will need a workflow for each one. Make sense?

3. Who needs to do it. Now look at each process and decide if you should be doing each task yourself, or if you need to outsource, hire someone, or implement a technological solution.  Are each of the tasks you complete utilizing your strengths? I know that sometimes in business you take on every task but that’s not the best use of your time or your talent. You should only be doing tasks which capitalize on your strengths and give all the other tasks to someone else or use technology to do it. Even if you’ve done it one way for a long time, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make a change. Some questions to ask yourself about your current process; Are you utilizing your strengths in the process? How is the current process serving you or your business? Are you generating revenue or growing your business utilizing the current process? Are you feeling frustrated with the process? What do you need to put something in place that works better and reduces your stress? If resources continue to be a strain after being in business for 2+ years, that should be an sign that you are working hard without the financial results to support your efforts. Something’s got to change! 

So you have identified, what you are doing, how you are doing it, and who needs to do it. The next step is to figure out what to charge for it to get done. This step requires research, experience and knowledge of your clientele.

4. Determine what to charge. Look at your pricing for each task and be able to breakdown what it costs you per hour to execute that task (for service providers only). If you sell products, make sure you can figure out what it takes to product a single product.  This one step will help you find out if you’re getting paid appropriately for the work that you are doing or the products you are selling.  If you can’t figure out your per hour/per item rate, then you need to do some research to make sure that you pricing your services/products correctly.  Where can you cut costs? Maybe you are spending too much to produce a product or offer a service and you can cut costs.

This last step is critical and without it you won’t get the results you crave. Time to execute!

5. Communicate your system.  By this I mean put your system in place! And I mean everywhere! It must be on your website, talk about it on social media, even if you do any public speaking. An example of this is to always give your website url and tell them to click on the Book Me button to book appointments with you. It must become part of your language so you can train everyone about how you do business.

In closing, I want you to think about your business and look at what’s working and what you need to refine.  You want a business you can continue to love, isn’t that why we are doing this? Your system will make room for your talent and passion and will allow you to continue to enjoy running your business as it evolves and grows.

To go deeper about this topic, set up a coaching session if you need help setting up your own system.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do you have systems in your own business? Or…How has Not having a system impacted you?