Is it Too Early to Create Systems in Your Business? 3 Questions to Ask...

There is a lot of talk online as to why you should systemize your business. And as a process consultant, I love that stuff. I really do think there's a lot of value in systemizing everything that you do. But I don't think systemizing is for everyone at every moment. And so in this video, I want to give you three questions you can ask yourself right now to decide whether or not it is currently the best time for you to systemize your business, your offer, your whatever. All right, but before we go into those three questions, I want to make sure you and I are on the same page as to what systemizing actually means. Systemizing is a challenging word because the word systems has a lot of different meanings. Most often when I hear an online business owner, or really any business owner use the word systems, they're talking about software. And just to be clear, abundantly clear, system is not software. These are two different words for a reason. They mean two totally different things. A system is your ecosystem, your environment that's combining software, sops, documentation, people, infrastructure that you have built. It's your whole environment for getting something done. Your onboarding system includes your software, your people, your processes, and so on. Your sales system is at a comprehensive look at how you sell. That same methodology applies throughout your entire business. When we're talking about systems, a software by itself is nothing other than a tool, okay? So given that a system is like our ecosystem, our whole environment we're trying to build. So when we are systemizing, what we are trying to do is protect that environment, to kind of capture it protected like a coral reef, right? And keep people or uncertainty or memory from. From destroying that environment we're building. Okay? So given that we are trying to build a whole environment with all the different layers of that ecological creation, we need to think very carefully about when we want to do that. That brings me to our three questions for today. The first question you want to ask yourself before systemizing is, do I know what I'm trying to get out of this? Do I know my goal? For example, if we are trying to protect an ecosystem to have a better coral reef, right? That is great. We know our goal. If we know we want to create a system about how to make a better french fry, great, we've got our goal. If we want to build a system about how to deliver the most amazing web design services, great, we've got our goal. But you need to have that before you start systemizing, because how you systemize a creation of a french fry is a lot different than how you would systemize the creation of a salad. I know that was a lot of metaphoric stuff. So let's bring it down to reality. Let's imagine you are a new lawn care business. You're just getting started. You are desperate to make ends meet. You're just trying to get your foot in the door. If you are not sure how you want to offer your services, what your services even look like, whether you're mowing lawns or doing commercial exterior landscaping renovations, if you are not sure about that level of detail, it is probably too soon to systemize. You can only really effectively systemize something when you have focus and you know what your end destination is going to be, at least for the short term. If you are in the phase of business or of life where you are purposely trying to experiment, there's no point in adding rigidity right now. It's kind of the opposite of what you want. Rather than adding all these systems and structures, just go do it. Go mow the lawns, go figure out what kind of offer you want to have. And once you figure that out, usually within the first six months to two years of being in business, then let's talk systems. One sign that you've actually satisfied this topic and you are in a position where you could move on is actually related to our sponsor for today's video. Textexpander. Our sponsor for today is a software that allows you to predefined snippets shortcuts that you type in your keyboard. And regardless of where you are typing, you can expand those thoughts out to long form messages, prompts and dialogues. This is a sponsor I'm actually super excited about, as is many of the team here at ProcessDriven, because so many of us use Textexpander to keep our own lives streamlined. One way that I like to use these is to avoid having shorthand emoji style content by instead using these expanders to turn things like lmk, which is normally let me know to a more professional spelled out version and all I have to do is type in the trigger snippet into my keyboard. Additionally, another one that I like a lot is refunded, which is one where I'll prompt a dialogue to allow me to have fill in the blank information. This allows me to have a fill in the blank dialogue pop up to make sure that information is always consistently formatted for when I'm manually tracking notes on different pieces of information. These are just a few simple examples of how textexpander allows you to save and repeat your thoughts. But the reason I'm sharing it here beyond them sponsoring this video is is because if you are in a position where you can start to capture your thoughts into these kind of chunks that you can then turn into snippets that repeat and repeat and repeat. You feel like shorthanding your writing might save you a ton of time each day. That's probably a good sign that you are ready to start systemizing a little bit further. P.S. if you want to try Textexpander for yourself, check out the link in the description below. All right, back to the video. The second question you want to ask yourself to check if you are ready for systemizing is do you know when what is important? There are so many areas in our business, so many systems that we are operating at any moment in time. Onboarding, sales, offboarding, hr, recruiting, all this stuff. And if you are in a position where everything feels equally important and equally chaotic, it's usually a good sign that you are too early to systemize. Or at least you're not in a season where that's the good fit. Chaos in all areas that feels equal is usually a sign that you need to take some action and stay stabilize some crises that are happening. Systemizing is something that is investing in the future of your business. And if everything is equally important, that really means nothing is yet important enough to warrant investing the time in developing systems and processes. So if you look at your business right now and there's not one clear area that you can see that you know that if you just systemized it would change everything, it would make everything everything easier, then it's probably a sign it is too early for you to systemize. However, if you're in a position where you know that streamlining your online business management onboarding for your new clients, if you know that that would save you so much time and change the way your business works, that's probably a sign that you are ready to systemize because you can see and imagine the actual roi. If you can't see the clear roi, maybe just take a break for a little bit. Oh, and I should say if you are struggling to see the return on investment for what you could systemize simply because you're not sure what your systems are, you're having a hard time making it visual. I also understand that that's kind of a whole separate can of worms. And if you need a little bit of help defining these and getting them out of your head, check out the link below this video where I have a webinar that I talk through how you can actually define the processes in your business so you can label them, systemize them, and really gamify this whole thing. So if that is your limiting factor, go check that out because that could really help with this step. Now, the third question to ask yourself, which is probably the hardest for most leaders and entrepreneurs out there, Do I really want to slow down now to speed up later? Now, for some leaders, the answer to this will always be no. You always want to go at a breakneck pace. But for most of us, we recognize the seasons of our business. There are some seasons where you've just got to go. You got to get to that first 20k, 50k, 100k, 1 million, whatever that number is. And once you're there, you realize, I'm starting to plateau. I kind of want to slow down here, get myself ready, then go again. And that's what this question is getting at. If your business or your organization is not yet cash flow positive, it's a very good sign that it is too early to go crazy on the systemization. At the same time, if you are neck and neck to dominate a blue ocean, then you might want to just focus on pedal to the metal instead of systemize later. Yes, there's always a pro and con of waiting on these things, but I would hate to see someone miss a business opportunity because they spent 20% of their workday writing sops when really they should have been just closing those deals. At the same time, I'd hate for someone to have so much energy on closing deals, no time on systemizing, and then struggle because they're unable to fulfill on their promises because they didn't systemize before they scaled. It's a balancing act between these two things. But you really want to ask yourself as a leader whether this is the time that you can afford to slow down in order to speed up. Now, just to throw a quick metaphor in this to help it stick in your head so you can remember this video a few hours or a few days from now, think about rock climbing. I like to rock climb. Maybe some of you do as well. When you are climbing up a rock, right, you have a rope tied in, you're climbing up there. It is your arms and legs that are pulling you up the wall, right? But you have that rope as a security. So if you fall, you're not falling all the way down, you're just falling to as far as the rope allows you to go. But when you're ready to move again, you've got to grab your arms and go up again and again and again. When it comes to systemization, systemization is really that rope. It prepares you with the confidence and security system to know that if you climb really high, you will not die if you fall, which is a nice thing to have. But at the same time, you. The rope itself is not what's pulling you up the wall. It's your own arms and legs. It is your actual action. And just to extend the metaphor further, there's this type of climbing called lead climbing. And for those of you who don't know, it basically means the rope is below you, you're leading the rope and not the other way around. And one perfect thing about this metaphor, this extension, is that with lead climbing, which is something I'm actually learning to do right now, when you are climbing up the wall, you're clipping the rope as you go. So if you climb too far without ever clipping a rope, if you do fall, you can whip off the wall and fly really far down. I think business is the same way. If we don't clip in, have these systems added as we go, if we ever do experience a moment of failure, there is a very long fall below us because those systems aren't there to support us. But at the same time, if we spend so much time clipping, clipping, clipping, clipping, clipping, we get so tired that we never end up climbing the actual wall. It's not systems that scale a business, in my view. In my view, it is people and ingenuity and creativity that allow a business to scale. And it's the systems, just like the rope on the rock climbing wall, that protect your progress, but the systems themselves. Having a super detailed meeting agenda that is not going to make sure you have more meetings. No, it just ensures that the meetings you do have never fail to meet that bar of expectations that you've set for yourself. Systems do not pull you up the wall. They support you as you climb to great heights. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's a helpful metaphor in my brain and hopefully it connects for you as well. So those are the three things you want to keep in mind when you're evaluating whether or not to systemize. Do I know what I am systemizing? Is it a French fry or salad? Do I know which area is most important? Can I see the tangible roi? And do I have the flexibility right now to slow down a little so I can speed up later? And if you're someone who's in a position where you're using templates or text expansion tools like maybe textexpander, our sponsor for today, then you are probably in a good position to start considering systemization further. If you'd like to talk more about this topic or if you enjoyed this video, please do like and subscribe. And if you want to try out textexpander for yourself, check out our link in the description below. Thanks so much for watching guys, and until next time, enjoy the process.