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If you feel like you are constantly drowning in admin tasks and never actually have time to work on the “money-making” tasks in your business, it might be time for you to streamline your business systems.
I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of an efficiency nerd. I love trialing new systems which promise to streamline my work processes, and love finding the best, most effective and easiest way to do those boring admin tasks, leaving me free to work on the bits of my business that I really love.
Going through your regular tasks, as well as your systems and streamlining the ones that you can, will take a little while but it will save you huge amounts of time in the long-run. I’d suggest spending the weekend getting them set up so you’re ready to hit the ground running on Monday morning with your shiny new systems!
Super Simple Ways to Streamline Your Business
Why you should streamline your processes and systems
Before we dive into the how let’s ask ourselves the all-important question…why?
Why should you carve out some time in your already too busy schedule to work on your own process and systems? I mean, you’re already spending all of your time serving your clients and on top of that, you’re trying to regularly post on social media and create new blog content and send newsletters to your list. Plus, you’re “just a solopreneur”. Fancy processes and systems are for people with teams, right?
Wrong! Processes and systems are the perfect way to streamline your business, creating MORE time in your business to focus on serving your clients, even if you’re a team of one.
It’s time to work smarter, not harder
There are only so many hours in a day, and when you’re trying to juggle running a business, alongside all those other life things that need doing (you know, like eating and occasionally sleeping for example), you need to learn to work smarter, rather than just amping up the number of hours you’re doing (3 hours sleep is fine, right?!)
It might take some time to set up these processes and systems, but the time you’ll save in the long run is going to be invaluable.
Give yourself the gift of time
The joy of streamlining your processes, to make them as sleek and simple as possible, is that you will save yourself so many little chunks of precious time which can really add up and allow you to finally get to those important jobs that have been sat on your to-do list forever (guilty!)
By automating things like your onboarding process, you will suddenly have a few extra hours each week to serve your clients, work on that eBook you’ve been writing for years or even just relax!
Automate before you outsource
Obviously, I am a huge promoter of the benefit of hiring a VA, but at the same time, there is no point in hiring someone to do something that you could be getting a tool, system, or template to do for you.
It’s a waste of your money, and a waste of your VA’s time, which could be better spent utilising their talents for something that will really help your business to grow. I’m not saying that you should automate instead of outsourcing but, by looking at what tasks can be done automatically, you’re freeing up time for your virtual team to really make a difference.
You’ll also probably find that your VA (or other freelance helpers) will be much more efficient in what they can get done if you have already streamlined your business as much as possible before hiring them.
So, how can you streamline your systems and get back all this magical time?!
1. Take note of where you are spending (or wasting!) your time
The first step in streamlining your business is to figure out where you are spending most of your time and then focus on how to create systems and processes around those tasks to help free up more of your time.
The best way to do this is to track how long you spend on all of the different tasks you do in your business. This will add some extra time to your already busy day but you only really need to do it for a week and the time you’ll save in the long-run is definitely worth it!
So, for every task, or type of task, you complete in your business on a day-to-day basis, time how long you spend doing that task and make a note of it.
Pretty soon, you’ll have a great idea of what you are spending a lot of time doing. For me, it was creating and sharing new content for my blog and replying to emails so I knew that I needed to set up processes and systems around these tasks to cut back on the time I was spending there.
2. Get rid of everything you don’t need
This is a tough one because we often feel like we need to be doing everything – blogging, and have a podcast, and a YouTube channel, and be posting on ALL of the social media channels – in order to have a successful business. On top of that we actually need to be finding clients, having discovery calls, onboarding new clients and serving them to the best of our abilities PLUS taking care of our own business admin tasks.
Don’t worry, I’ll be telling you how to streamline all of these things shortly. But, for now, let’s just get rid of everything we don’t need to be doing.
Hate posting on Twitter? Don’t do it!
Know that your ideal clients aren’t on Facebook? Get rid of that Facebook Group that you’re spending hours a week on.
Hate writing other people’s newsletters? Don’t offer that as a service!
Anything that you don’t need to do in order to run your business, get rid of.
Anything that you hate doing in your business, get rid of. I say this because when we’re doing tasks that we absolutely hate, even for clients, it takes up a lot of our time and energy that could be better spent in other places.
3. Create SOPs, workflows + checklists
The next step we’re going to take to streamline your business is to create SOPs, workflows, and checklists for all of the tasks that you regularly do in your business and for your clients.
Dig out the list of tasks you made in step 1 and, for each task, create a step-by-step guide or checklist. Don’t forget to include all of the tiny details that you usually spend time checking. For example, if you find yourself looking up a particular hex code each time you create a new sign up form, add the hex code to your guide.
Add these SOPs, workflows and checklists to your chosen project management tool so that you can refer to them, or even duplicate them, each time you complete a task.
These documents will help you streamline your business on a couple of different levels.
Firstly, if you’re following the same steps each and every time you do something, the work you are doing will be consistent – each blog post will be formatted in the same way, each client will receive the same onboarding experience as the next, and so on.
Secondly, you will be saving yourself a lot of time. You don’t need to spend hours rummaging through your sent folder to figure out what you sent to the last client you offboarded, you won’t need to sit staring at a blank laptop screen trying desperately to remember all of the steps you take when setting up a new opt-in form and you won’t be clicking back and forth between 20 different tabs to have access to all of the information you need to create a new website for your latest client.
Don’t worry if you can’t remember all of the steps and key details when you first create these documents, you can always add to them the next time you complete that task and remember the additional details. Done is better than perfect!
4. Don’t be afraid of templates
If you find yourself writing similar emails from scratch each time, or perhaps when it comes to creating Pins for your blog posts you open up a blank document every single time, why not spend a little time creating some basic templates that you can adapt as needed.
Templates were definitely something that I really didn’t want to use in my business when I first started out. I wanted to give my clients a personalised experience and I was worried that, by using templates, I would sound like a robot and not be able to make real, human connections with my clients. That just wasn’t true.
Templates are the number one thing that has helped me to streamline my business (and my clients’ businesses too!) AND I don’t feel like my clients are faced with an automated robot either.
Forms + onboarding docs
The process that takes you from meeting a potential client to you actually starting work with that client has a LOT of moving parts and can take a lot of time, especially if you don’t use templates.
I actually use Dubsado for all elements of this process but you can do this using other tools too. Here are the templates I have created for this process:
- Initial inquiry form
- Discovery call booking form (and confirmation/reminder emails)
- Proposals (one for each of the services I offer)
- Client intake form (and email sending it to the client)
- Contract
- Invoice
- Welcome packet
- Email sending contract, invoice and welcome packet
Some of these things run completely on auto and have no input from me, such as the inquiry form as it remains the same regardless of the potential client however, a lot of the other documents and emails I tweak the contents and tailor them to the specific client, creating a beautifully personalised experience in just a couple of minutes!
Emails
I’m not suggesting you send a copy and pasted response to every email, but if there are certain bits that you often need to repeat (eg., your terms, prices, answers to frequently asked questions) then make the most of the canned response feature in Gmail, or if you use a different mail program, simply create a word document of templates to use.
Like I mentioned above, Dubsado holds a few of my template emails around onboarding and invoicing but I also use the canned email feature in gmail for other emails that I frequently send.
Graphics
The same goes for any graphics you need to create – set up some templates that are already the size and specifications needed, where you only need to change the text, and background image, and you’ll save yourself a whole bunch of time.
It’s no secret that I love using Canva for this. For each blog post I have templates for 4 pins, 3 social media images (Twitter size), a square featured image and an Instagram image. It takes me about 5 minutes to create ALL of them. Simple!
5. Invest in tools + Apps to make life easier
For most parts of your business, there will be an app or tool that will help you streamline things. Whether they just make your life that little bit easier or they allow you to automate the process completely, they are well worth the investment!
Client management
I know I’ve mentioned it before but I love Dubsado. It’s the perfect CRM for my VA business – I can automate the onboarding process, invoicing, appointment booking and offboarding process. What more could I want?
Invoicing
I mainly use Dubsado for my service-based invoices but there are lots of other options out there like Quickbooks and Xero.
Automate recurring invoices so that they get sent to clients on a regular basis without you needing to do a thing.
Social Media
Scheduling social media, for me, goes hand in hand with batching which is a great way to save time in your business and generally help things run a bit smoother.
For most of us, social media is a massive part of our marketing strategy, but finding the time during the day to post live can be difficult (and yet we never seem to struggle to find the time to scroll mindlessly through Instagram, or is that just me?!)
Set aside a chunk of time at the beginning of the week, or month, and queue up posts for your various social media channels. There are a few different systems that will help you do this, such as Buffer, or Hootsuite, but personally I use Smarterqueue because I can queue up posts for my Facebook groups as well as my pages and Twitter accounts. Once the posts are added to the evergreen queue, they get recycled over and over again.
If you’re working on your Pinterest strategy, Tailwind is the best way to make the most of your Pins. Spend some time setting up your account so that it posts on auto (Tailwind will figure out the best time of day for you), without you having to lift a finger.
Finally, I use Planoly to schedule and auto-post out my Instagram posts. I love the drag and drop interface as it allows me to see how my grid will look when my posts have been added and move them around if things don’t quite look right. You can also save groups of hashtags which saves a TON of time!
Looking for more ways to streamline your business? Join us in the Organise and Grow Hub.
