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Business Systems

The Power of Systems and Numbers – RFM018

By Heather Cameron Leave a Comment

Systems and Numbers

In this episode Caroline Wood and Heather chat about what it is like to be an introvert in business. We discuss how important it is to know your business numbers. Caroline share her thoughts on why creating systems in your business is key to your success.

“Growing a business is about doubling down on what is working and letting go of whats not.” – Caroline Wood

Who is Caroline Wood:

Caroline helps introverted service based business owners spend more time doing what they love, and less time chasing clients for signatures and payment. She specialises in bringing personal touch to automation and creating quiet business strategies to make any introverted heart sing!

Caroline work with service based businesses, with a focus on those run by introverts, to put in place systems and automations so they can create a business that supports rather than takes over their lives.

Caroline created her business after spending 20 years wandering through various jobs and careers including volunteering in Namibia, working for not for profits both in Australia and Laos, working for the Australian government and working as an auditor in two of the Big 5 accounting firms.

Highlights:

  • 2:30 Caroline’s wandering path to entrepreneurship.
  • 6:10 Caroline’s journey from starting her business “working for money” to now working in her zone of genius
  • 8:32 Finding your sweet spot for your business is an investment
  • 9:14 Listen to your intuition/gut – Specifically around who are your right clients
  • 11:10 People will pay you for your expertise – your zone of genius
  • 13:00 Don’t make assumptions about what people know
  • 16:00 Be on top of your numbers
  • 16:51 Visibility and marketing as an introvert
  • 20:00 The “shoulds” – if you are not enjoying something then don’t do it or find another way
  • 24:20 The challenge of recharging your energy
  • 26:55 Systems and simplifying your business
  • 29:20 What is a system – they are powerful and they don’t have to be complicated
  • 33:00 The power of a checklist
  • 37:50 Tracking number for visibility and what to focus on.
  • 48:18 Caroline’s favourite quote: “What if I fail, but my daring what if you fly?” – Erin Hanson
  • 49:10 Caroline’s parting message: “You shouldn’t be afraid of your numbers. You need to come grips with them if you are going to be serious about your business. You have to understand the numbers. Yes, you can outsource a lot of that work but the key numbers, you as a business owner, really need to understand to step up to your role as being a CEO.“

Connect with Caroline:

“Because it simple for me doesn’t mean it is simple for someone else. People will pay you for your area of genius!”– Caroline Wood

Website: https://carolinemwood.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quietlycaroline/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quietlycaroline/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/quietlycaroline

Connect with Heather:

Join our Facebook Community: Ready For More! Women Business Owners Circle

Facebook: www.facebook.com/igniteyourmarket/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cameronheather/

Download Your Should Buster: www.igniteyourmarket.com/shouldbuster

Filed Under: Business Basics, Ready For More! Podcast Tagged With: #knowyournumbers, #readyformore, Business Systems

Video: 5 Steps to Create Simple Systems – a Behind the Scene Look at My Content Creation System

By Heather Cameron Leave a Comment

Are you looking for business building tips and ideas?

I’m live every Tuesday at noon (EST) on the Ignite Your Market Facebook Business Page.

Join me live or watch for the replays on my blog – The Spark.

Each week I’ll be sharing tips and ideas to help you:

  • Identify your market and opportunities.
  • Increase your productivity.
  • Connect with your client and prospects.
  • Ignite your markets and your businesses

Video: 5 Steps to Create Simple Systems – a Behind the Scene Look at My Content Creation System

“Small business owners and entrepreneurs worthy of the title need to build systems that replace themselves.”- Michael E. Gerber, The E Myth Revisited

Michael E. Gerber book The E Myth Revisited focused on why it is so important to capture your systems if you want to grow and scale your business. To give your customer the best experience possible you need to know how you do things, be able to repeat and improve on them. You need to know your systems.

This doesn’t have to be difficult and the time you put into capturing your system will be paid back to you very quickly.

This week I want to take you behind-the-scenes and show you how I’ve created and captured my content creation system.

Here are the 5 steps I’ve outlined in the video:

Step 1: Identify

Identify what types of actions you take regularly that drives your business. Think about which one is a good candidate to capture in a system.

For example weekly content creation and sharing

Step 2: Capture Your Process

Think about everything that has to be done from the 1st step to completion. If you are a visual person draw a mindmap or capture it in a document. When I started to create my content creation system I first started my mapping it out on my blackboard, then I captured each step in word table and finally I set it up in an online task tool.

It is really important to write down each step, then update it as you walk through the process with each small step.  You’ll see in my video that I learned that I had to add backtracking steps to do after I finished some steps because the process isn’t always linear.

Step 3: Look for Ways to Streamline Your Process

Now that you have a process capture you can look at ways to make it as effective as possible. What tools, recourse or help do you need? Is there software that could automate parts? How can you batch steps to save time? What steps could you outsource or delegate?

You may or may not have a team to delegate tasks to; if you don’t yet that ok. Capturing your process is the 1st to know what you could give to someone else to do.

I have a client who writes and schedules 80% of her social media content once a month, which is a great example of batching her work. She leaves the 20% todo weekly based on current events.

Step 4: Use it!

Try out your newly captured system and follow it as if this was the 1st time. At each step look at what is work well and what needs improvements, capture it all.

Step 5: Review Your Systems Every 90 or 180 Days

Having great systems will save you time and money and will have a big impact on your business. If you set them and follow them they will continue to work for you. However, things change in your business, what you know and in the technology you use.

Understanding your business well enough to be able to create systems is only the beginning. Knowing the right types of systems to use, and how to utilize them best to obtain the results you really want takes time, effort, focus and drive.

Filed Under: Business Basics, Content Tagged With: Behind the Scene, Business Systems, Content Management

Ignite Your Market Challenge: Capture One of Your Business Systems

By Heather Cameron Leave a Comment

The Ignite Your Market Weekly Challenge’s goal is to create simple but powerful actions that you can do each week that will help you:

  • Identify your market and opportunities.
  • Connect with your client and prospects.
  • Ignite your markets and your businesses

This Week’s Ignite Your Market Challenge: Capture One of Your Business Systems

Do you have your business systems captured? Michael E. Gerber book, The E Myth Revisited, focused on why it is so important to capture your systems if you want to grow and scale your business. To give your customer the best experience possible you need to know how you do things, be able to repeat and improve on them. You need to know your systems.

This doesn’t have to be difficult and the time you put into capturing your systems will be paid back to you very quickly.

This week’s Ignite Your Market Challenge is to Capture One of Your Business System. I’d suggest starting with your content management/marketing system. Why? Because I know from experience how much time you can save when you’ve captured it and you can repeat it weekly.

Instead of my normal Tuesday Facebook Live at noon, I’ll be sharing a Behind-the-Scenes video of how I create my content creating and social media system on my Ignite Your Market Business Page.

Filed Under: Content, Ignite Your Market Challenge, Planning Tagged With: Business Systems, Content Management, content marketing

Weekly Spark: Identifying Your Systems

By Heather Cameron 31 Comments

February’s Weekly Spark’s theme is The Importance of Systems and the last weekly Spark was Do You Have The Systems You Need?. 

Today’s topic is Identifying Your Systems.

No matter what business you are in you follow systems. One key element to business success is having solid repeatable systems in place that allow you to be consistent and more efficient.

All the elements of a business can be broken down to into systems. Knowing this, and maximizing it, can serve us well as business owners. In fact, the more systems you put in place, the more business you’ll be able to handle.

The first step to improving your systems and therefore your business results is to identify them.

What are the most important areas of your business? Have you identified and captured your systems?

In the video below I share the 9 areas that all businesses share. Using these areas you can start to identify the top 2 or 3 systems that you want to create and capture for your business.

 

What are the top 2 or 3 systems that you’d like to implement in your business? What difference will it make?

Filed Under: Business Basics, Mindset Tagged With: Business Ownership, business planning, Business Systems, midweek spark, mindset

Weekly Spark: Do You Have The Systems You Need?

By Heather Cameron 10 Comments

System-Image

February’s Weekly Spark theme is The Importance of Systems. 

Every business, small or large, follows systems whether they realize it or not. Thinking about systems may not be the most exciting part of your business, but ultimately it is one of the most important secrets to create a successful, sustainable business.

Here’s the problem. Systems don’t work in business when they are nonexistent, inconsistent or broken.

Typically new entrepreneurs and small business owners rarely capture and implement systems. We shoot from the hip. We kind of know what works, but we don’t spend the time to capture, refine and work our systems to our advantage.

The reality is that we all use systems everyday in our personal and professional lives. For example, what is your morning routine? Do you check your emails 1st thing? Are you busy making lunches, dressing the kids and getting them out of the door? I know one entrepreneur whose system to separate their work and personal life is to go out, pick up a cup of coffee, come back, go to their office and read their morning emails.

Humans naturally develop ways of doing things. If you give a group of people a task that needs to be completed regularly, they will eventually develop a system for doing it with the objective of making it easier. When a business takes and processes a payment, they are following a system. In the food industry, creating consistency in each product requires a system.

All the elements of a business can be broken down to into systems. Knowing this, and maximizing it, can serve us well as business owners. In fact, the more systems you put in place, the more business you’ll be able to handle.

So many small business owners that I meet have never thought about the systems they use. If they thought about them, they have not captured their systems into a repeatable format. All we have to do is to look at the success of the franchise industry to understand the importance of knowing your systems. Statically speaking, the success of new franchises is more than 80%. Why? What are you buying when you buy a franchise? Yes you are buying the name, but more importantly you’re buying their system of success. One of the key components of a franchise is the Franchise Operating Manual. It lays out all of the steps that the franchisee must follow to maintain brand consistency and to ensure their franchise is successful.

What systems should be in your operating manual? What systems do you have in place now? What systems do you need to capture? What systems do you need to implement?

Next Week’s Weekly Spark: Identify and Prioritizing Your Systems

 

Filed Under: Business Basics Tagged With: Business Ownership, business planning, Business Systems, midweek spark, weekly spark

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