How To Systematize As A Solopreneur - Case Study

Systems, even for the Solopreneur, are absolutely vital. And I'll use again the example of a product I service, that the whole point of a product I service is to deliver something in a uniform manner as quickly as possible with the highest amount of value.

Hi, it's Dave. I'm joined by Jay Sennett from Holy Gusto. And he was recently bit by the systemology bug. He's actually been a systems lover for a. A very long time. And I'd love to learn a little bit more about how his story started and how it's going and where he sees it going in the future, especially as a solopreneur. I know sometimes systems and processes really starts to take a center stage as you grow, but it's important to weave the systems thinking into the DNA of the business very early. So maybe just to start. Jay, can you tell us a little bit about your business and maybe. Yeah. How you came across Systemology or, or systems in general?

Absolutely. So I started, I've been in the doing email marketing since 2006. I started a very small publishing company in the mid 2000s and used a very early version of Mailchimp and understood pretty quickly that this would be a great way to market. And then I've just been doing it, doing it. And then Covid came, you know, the queue up, losing all my clients. So I started this email marketing business and pretty quickly realized that I was not wanting to do conversion copywriting because that's not really what interested me. And parallel to this, although they hadn't intersected, was a lifelong interest in systems and orderliness and sort of this idea in math, you know, Pemdas polynomials, exponential exponent, exponents, multiplication, divide, add, subtract, like there's an order to do things. And in doing that, it creates efficiency. And I was exposed to this in Japan, which is understandably and well known for being very systematized. And then both of my parents are very organized and sometime during COVID I started getting really interested in ClickUp. And then I was exposed to Layla at Systems Process Driven. Process driven. And that's how I got exposed to systemology and bought your book and really kind of solidified what I had been thinking, which is that even as a solopreneur, really kind of very young in my solopreneur career, that I, I needed to codify things, even knowing that I might iterate then they might change. But the process of understanding what's happening to what, where am I involved, what software am I using has been really instrumental and I think me continuing to run my business in a very, with a very small footprint, but I can really have what I hope is a bigger impact for my clients. And what I do now is essentially what I call sort of both ends of email marketing. So I focus very much on the automations and the tech side of stuff and the programming and then on the other side I do strategy. And one of the things that I talk about with strategy is as a business owner, the single biggest threat that I see to email marketing is when the owner has a very trusted relationship with either another business partner or a VA and they're, you know, kind of yelling and telling and nothing is codified and they, then I start to let them talk and I say, gosh, you know, it's just, I got, I don't want to train another VA and blah blah, blah. And I'm like, well, you need to create processes. And then of course I'm quoting your mantra, which is, and it shouldn't be you, you shouldn't be doing it, but you need to do it because there is no way and really for your business to scale to 7, 8, 9 figures if you're still loading up campaigns and then hitting send, it's just, it's never going to scale when it comes to copywriting.

It's from the outside looking in. A lot of people would go, it's a really creative endeavor and oftentimes the idea of systems and processes seems at odds with the idea of creative work. I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see that and if there is process inside creative work or do you think about systemize everything around the creative work, how do you think about that?

That's a really, really good question. And to a certain degree I think it depends on the personality of the person. So I would be someone who would be inclined to systematize around the creative process. So the client acquisition process is all systematized. How many people I might interview for Voice of Customer research, how many of those would then they get uploaded to ChatGPT and you know, messaging insights, that sort of thing. And so that field for me personally works. I think there are people who might even go more granular, particularly I think with sequences so you can systematize. I'm going to sit down and write all the subject lines and this is how I write my subject lines and I'm going to do the content and I'm going to reduce the, all the interviews and product research that I've done into a document and that will become what I Pull from kind of a thing. And then for copywriting, then there's also systematizing how you interact with the client, how you get all that information that you need, how you're giving it back to them, what's the review process, how many edits do they get? Like that can all be systematized. And my colleagues who are really, really, really talented copywriters have all of that buttoned down and it's the same thing every time. So then when it's time for them to actually write the emails, that's all they're doing. They're not worrying about, oh, what about the subject line for this? What's the cta? Right. Because typically the rule is you start with your CTA and then you go out sort of up and out of the email and they've already done all that. So when they're actually writing the copy, the text, everything else around it is taken care of.

When you mentioned something earlier about the role that AI plays and I'm starting to really see this blend between process and AI because oftentimes a lot of the process just ends up being the programming for the AI. And the way that you take process is how you give instructions to get that output. There's also a layer that sits over the top of that, which is the human review part. Now, when you think about how you're using AI in your work, especially in writing, I'd love to get an idea on how you see AI assisting in the work that you do.

I, for me, it's helpful in.

When.

I was first getting started with systems and thinking about how I might talk about it with clients and in my own work, I would sit down with ChatGPT and say, can you give me three different, three examples of three different SOPs about this? Like how could I construct it? Is that kind of where you.

The answer that you even just the way that you do it with your copywriting, like your. It sounds like conducting customer interviews and you kind of hinted at the idea, then you feeding that into chat GPT and it sounds like you've got a bit of a process for how you leverage those tools. And it's just now part of one step in your process that then accelerates the, the probably the output both in quality and speed. But yeah, I'm not sure how you see if it's an assistant, a replacement. Is it going to be a replacement?

It is definitely an assistant. It's also replaced all of the work of reading. You know, you get dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of words if you've, you read Amazon reviews about a competitor product or your own product and you, you have customer interviews and testimonials like that could be 50 or 60 pages if you put it all in a single document. And what's nice about ChatGPT is you just parse that out and strip out all the, you know, any information, name, location. And it does a fantastic job of summarizing that. I mean it, it's summarizing capabilities are worth the $20 a month. It, the can you draft me a five email sequence so I can sell my product out of the gate? It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. But summarizing and then also strategizing. So here's my process now can you help me figure out ways to improve it or what am I missing? What am I not thinking of when I'm thinking about documenting this process? That's also, ChatGPT has also been very helpful in that way. So I would say I really like it for the much bigger picture that it can bring to data. It's great for creating flowcharts like oh, here's the automation. It does this and this email slips in there. I can just talk like record it and then upload it and it will draw the flowchart for me. So that's how I use it. It's a combination of assistant and replacement.

Yes. When you got started down this systemization process, what was some of the first places that you got started?

I got started with, believe it or not, following up with a client, you know, just here's, you know, after the, at the end of the engagement I do this, then you know, two days later I do that, I send a thank you note, you know, a small gift certificate, whatever. And that varies depending on the how long I've been working with them, for example. And I just wrote that down. And then the next thing that I did was systematize all of my discovery calls. I don't know why. It never occurred to me that I could actually write out the questions and frame the discovery call the same way and have the same follow up and ask the same series of questions. And that was really the second place that I did it. The place where it's still a little more free flowing is actually how I'm delivering the services in part because when I'm talking with a potential client, you know, there's always something else that they want because at that point I'm not delivering a product I service, I'm actually delivering a one on one service. And so I'm still trying to sort out what I want to be more productized and what I can individualize and how much of it I want to individualize because I don't want to, I don't want to continue to make the beginning solopreneur's mistake, which is every engagement is new every single time. I mean that just I did that for the first year in my business and what a time suck that was in retrospect. I mean it was unbelievable. So I've been going outside in like that and I'm thinking about hiring someone but it, it's hard because I, I don't feel like everything's sorted at this point. But maybe that's not the point. Maybe I bring someone on and then they help me see things that I'm not seeing. In terms of systems and processes, definitely.

When you're starting out, one of the big suggestions I have is it's the whole idea of delegating down to typically less skilled, lower cost labor to free you up to work on the high value tasks. That's really the game of systems and processes to get you working on the highest value stuff that only Jay can work on. Chatting with clients, crafting some of those emails, doing the final review. But there might be a range of different administrative tasks, especially once you start to systemize and you leverage ChatGPT for summaries. There's probably the chasing up of all of that initial material and organizing it in ingesting it so that when you sit down ready to go, you have all of the pieces. So that definitely is a, a great place to start. I think. There's never a point where you say I'm 100% ready. Part of it is a little bit of a fly by the seat of your pants. And there's still an incredible amount that needs to be learned with regards to overseeing a team member, working virtually delegating, following up all of these different things that also take time. So whether it's looking at offshore solutions and even starting part time because I know, you know, when you're a solopreneur, you know the margin fair error is as tight as it's ever going to be to, so you need to spend that money wisely. Also one of the reasons why I make a big case for process because even if you get it wrong and then the assistant ends up leaving and you've captured the process, then the next time the next assistant comes on board, you can shortcut that learning curve that becomes your base and you get started. So I kind of already intuitively got that feeling that you need.

Well, and it's what I like about writing it down and, and this may sound funny to people listening is that then it's something I can improve on. I can't improve on anything that's floating around in my head or living inside of me. It's really helpful to get it out, to really understand what I'm doing. And what I've also found is the process of processes has been helpful for me to decide is this something I really want to pursue? Is this something that I want to codify in a more formal way in my business? Because what value is it bringing? Right? Because I'm a real big believer in the Eisenhower matrix. If, if I don't have to do it, it's not helpful to the business, I will stop doing it. I'm not, I'm not into busy work. It it, that stuff is not interesting to me. So the process of reading your book and you know, watching some of the videos and seeing, you know, folks that are so much farther down this road and how systems has transformed not only been helpful for me in working with clients, but really helpful in terms of how do I want to structure my services. Because email marketing, particularly the tech side of things, is a little bit of a strange bird because people never typically wake up in the morning, go, yeah, I got to revamp my entire email tech side of things. It's bad. It's usually the automation broke or the lead magnet isn't delivering or this launch was a little flat. So what does that mean in terms of my process? Is it a monthly thing? Is it a ad hoc? But ad hoc is everything's a one off. So systems really gives me a framework for thinking about these things in terms of time and money really.

Is there anything in particular in my work that spoke to you? I mean you've had some exposure to systems and processes and looked in on YouTube at other content. Was there something about the systemology work that made you go, yeah, there's something here?

Honestly, it was the system of system, like the system itself that you had created. Because years after Process Driven with Leila Years was the first book that I really dove into and it was just really cool to me that you there is a process to creating processes. And that sounds so, I don't know, wide eyed or kind of naive, but it had never occurred to me because, you know, I came out of the academic environment. I was support staff at a large teaching university here near Ann Arbor, Michigan and SOPs, you know, these were like the cudgel that HR wielded over you to fire you or, you know, keep you from getting your race. So they were always this very adversarial document. And reading your book, I was like, no, these are actually like. They're like a trusted employee. I mean, these are. These are. These are things that dramatically alter the trajectory of a business in terms of time and money. And it just really hit me. And your story about needing to finally do this for yourself and everything that you had gone through, you know, I knew I didn't want to do the sort of before part of your life, but the after part was really intriguing. And so I was like, okay, I get to learn. Right? I get to leverage your experience. And so that was really kind of. You formalized it for me. Right. Because despite it being so obvious to me, it's really not something that people are necessarily drawn to out of the gate. So that was. What was transformative for me, was it's a system.

Yeah. Which is funny because I equally have read a lot of books that referenced process, and that's. I really wrote the book that I wish I had because I got to the end a lot of them, and I thought, yeah, but how do I do it? Where do I get started? What's the first step? What's the second step? So it's good you're confirming for me the. That I was filling a particular gap there in the market, in the tail end. I don't know if there's anything that you could say to someone. I think systemology very clearly makes sense for someone who has a smaller team or a team and then is building that momentum. For the Solopreneur, I sometimes feel like I have to make some little tweaks and modifications because it was originally written for someone with a small team, whereas the Solopreneur, a lot of the thinking still applies, but there are a few tweaks I talk about, not necessarily over engineering or over documenting very early on because you get little leverage from it, but that sometimes people misinterpret that, as systems aren't important for solopreneurs. So I don't know if there's anything that you might be able to say with the benefit of experience applying some of this stuff to someone in that position.

I would say that, and I do say systems, even for the Solopreneur are absolutely vital. And I'll use again the example of a product I service. The whole point of a product I service is to deliver something in a uniform manner as quickly as possible with the highest Amount of value. Well, if I don't have to think about, oh my God, it just landed in my inbox. Okay, what am I, what email am I supposed to send them? Where do I direct them to?

Right.

It's, it's either automated or it's. For me, it's, it's automated behind the scenes, then I'm not stressed about what's happening next and I'm not wasting time because it, it, that's the thing with solopreneurs, right? Like we, we take off or the plane's going down the Runway and we want to get away from time and people's money, right? That's like you're just an hourly wage. Well, the way to do that is to deliver something more quickly in the same amount of time. And honestly, the only way I know how to do that is to standardize something to make it into a process. I don't know how to do it any other way. Right. If I'm doing it myself, then what I can systematize, I do. And what I'm finding is with my current product, I service. The more I continue to think in a process oriented manner, I'm actually like, oh, I can actually systematize this and this and this. So the whole thing in theory will one day be entirely systematized. And then if I wanted to, I could chunk out that and send some of it to, you know, a lower cost person somewhere else outside the U.S. yeah. So I would tell any solopreneur, as soon as you do something more than once, write it down or talk it into your phone, load it up to the Otter AI, get that transcribed ChatGPT is great. Clean this up. Can you make it a, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, step by step? Like it can be that simple.

Yeah, perfect. I think really the key is just to get started, start to build it into the DNA of the business. And that way when team members start to join you and you grow, they go, ah, this is the way it's done here. So, yes. Appreciate your time today, Jay. I'll pop a link over to Holy Gusto so people can check in and yeah, it might be worth us having another catch up a part two. I'd love to zoom ahead in 24 months and then see what impact the ripple effect of installing systems and getting it underway looks like as you go through the process of growing. So, yeah, a huge thank you for your time today.

Yeah, thank you so much. All right, look forward to connecting in 24 months. All right, man, take care.