The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 103: 6 Figure Systems

In today’s episode I will dive deep into systems and how to get your systems set up for scaling your business and getting to those 6 figures! We will be talking about the most important systems in your business and some great tools to help you automate and delegate this systems efficiently.

6 Figure Systems

By: Melissa Lin

Today, we are going to be diving into all things systems. I love this topic! Now, wherever you are in your business right now, you might not believe this, but believe it or not, you are using systems. Even if you have just started your business or signed your first client, you are using some type of system. If you're scaling to 10K months or 20K months then you've got many, many systems. You have some type of system right now. So, you've got some type of system for some of your daily tasks at the moment for the things that you're doing. For example, when you go and post something on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your podcast; wherever you may be, whatever platform you're using, you have a system. You write your post, you grab your hashtags, you decide on what picture you want to use, and then you go and post it. Those steps that you take, they're part of your system.

Mapping Your Systems

Now, how do we actually start to improve our systems? And what are some of the systems that we should be using when we're wanting to reach the six figure level? This is exactly what I want to dive into today. One of your action items will be to actually map out some of your current systems so that as you do them, you can start to put them into training videos or step by steps. And then hand it off to your first team hire or second team; whoever that may be. It's going to be so much easier for you to hand these tasks off so that you can continue to do your thing and stay in your zone of genius. Because at some point, if you want to continue to scale and continue to help more people, you get to do it with more help.

You do not get to do this alone. If you are a one woman show right now, don't get too comfy because we don't want to stay in that one woman show too long. We get to get the help so that you can stay in your zone of genius. And so we're definitely going to get into different systems that I use at six figures. The systems that I've got now in place at multiple six figures. And we're already prepping ahead for the multiple seven figure level. We've already got systems in place so that we're ready for that. We're always improving our systems. And this is something you're definitely going to do as well, because technology is always improving. Technology is always shifting. There's new platforms, new softwares, new things coming in where we're always going to be improving and you want to be ahead of the curve in your business. Right? We don't want to be improving our systems once we've already reached that level. We want to always be prepping ahead. So you don't hit burnout. So your business doesn't, not that it ever will, but you don't want your business to feel like it's up in flames and going under if you're not prepped ahead of time with some of these systems. And we can start to work on this now, there's no reason we can't start to work on this right now.

Improving Your Systems

So, again, as I said, my team and I, we're always working on improving our systems. We're always taking them to the next level. So when we did hit six figures a few years ago, we were already working on building a multiple six figure system. And once we hit multiple six figures last year, we already built the seven figure model before reaching too far into the multiple six figures. And again, now we're building on that multiple seven figure system. So you're probably asking yourself, "Melissa, you're saying this word system, you're putting all of this out." All that stuff. What are some of the systems and things to my business that actually matter right now? What are the things that I can start to really write down? These are the steps. These are how we do things. That way I can delegate very soon. Because most will start to delegate or hire their first team member once they've reached anywhere around the 3K month level or sooner. So what systems matter? What can some of these systems look like? How can we systematize our business processes and all of these things so you can continue and improve what you're doing while working less or creating an incredible client experience? All of these things we get to do. So we're going to answer all of those today as I go through some of the systems that we've added into our business years ago, those six figure systems, and many of them are still part of our business now, we've just expanded onto them so they fit the business as it continues to scale, I want you to ask yourself how the system looks in your business right now and how you can start to add some of these things in. And if you're not sure how to add them in or what these could potentially look like, I've got you. Don't worry. This is exactly what we're going to go into today. And I'm going to share plenty of examples with you as well. So here we go. Ready or not, six figure systems.

Your Content and Marketing Systems

Now, the first thing that I want to dive into is your overall content and content marketing system. So your content is a very important concept in a very important piece in your business. Right. Your content and your body of work, essentially. And so I want you to think about how you currently organize your content right now. Content is so important because it's your business's body of work online. It's always out there on the Internet. People can always see it. People can always dive into it when they see you. They can see the value that you add and more. Content is one of those foundational items that are needed to create that like, know, trust factor with your audience to then eventually create conversions from your leads and sales down the road.

Now, since we know that content is important, I want you to start to ask yourself this question. How are you currently organizing this very important piece of your business? Or what I like to call how are you banking it right now? Where does your content sit? Is it on Instagram and only Instagram? What I mean by this is if Instagram were to shut down tomorrow, do you have your content saved somewhere? Do you have a system where you can go back and look through your old content and grab pieces of content to repurpose? And if the answer is no, that's OK. We get to start working on this ASAP. That is your system that you deserve to work on today. It's one of the most important parts of your business up there with your clients and your team and always expanding different things.

Banking Your Content

That's the first thing we're going to dive into, how to be banking your content. And I'm going to go through how we used to bank some of our content way back in the day. And maybe you're exactly where we were a few years ago. I'm going to give you some ideas on how you can improve some of these things. So when my business first started years ago, I first kept all of my content in my notes on my computer and my phone.

So if you have an iPhone, Mac, iPad or whatever; if you've got something like that. I'm sure android has something like this. But it used to be just on my notepad. I would have all of my captions right on my notepad and copy and paste it onto Instagram. And that was it. That was the only place I could find it. So if I wanted to go back and repurpose or recycle, I definitely could. All I had to do was go to my notes and, you know, go to the little search tab in the notes and try and find it. However, it was not organized. It was just copied and pasted into my notes, just sitting there. And we know that's not a very organized way to keep one of the most important parts of your business. So I had it in my notepad for quite some time. And what made it a little difficult was as I started to hire team members, they couldn't really access my notepad on my personal computer or my personal phone. So I needed to move my content, my bank of content online somewhere so that my team members could also have access to my content.

So we eventually moved all of it into Google Docs. And this was actually a few years ago when we were first moving the six figure systems and definitely worked for some time. However, over time we learned that Google Docs isn't a great spot to keep all of our content as it does take time to try and find content. Yes, you can “control F”, yes, you can search through the different things. However you can't necessarily organize it very well. Right? You can't really turn your content on your Google Docs into a pivot table for any of you Excel lovers out there. And so over time we learned that Google Docs wasn't the best spot for us, where we were in our business at that moment with multiple team members. If you are on your own right now, solo-prenuer, and you're looking to hire maybe your first team member. Yeah, Google Docs, it's going to be great. However you want to sort of think about, OK, what's next? Right. You want to be thinking about setting your business up on the backend for multiple six figures. Do you need to spend eight hours a day, seven days a week on your systems? No.

However, this gets to be a little bit of your week. So they are always prepping your business and working on it so you can turn it into that well oiled machine eventually. And so now we have multiple team members and all of our content is actually banked inside of Air Table. Air table is an incredible software, incredible platform, and we use it in many areas of our business.

If you're one of my clients, you've probably seen the behind the scenes. I love sharing behind the scenes of my business, how we create things, how we run things, how we organize things, because sometimes you need to see how it looks inside of a business for you to really get your business to that level as well. Just to get some inspiration and have an idea of how it's possible to do all of this. Because you may see we are putting out content very regularly. We are adding value every single day. It's one of our huge pieces that we love to do, and it's really non-negotiable for us. Adding value every single day and putting out content every single day is required. And so we have it all banked inside of Air Table. And you want to make sure that whatever form of banking you're content that you choose is something that you and your team will actually use. And it may take some experimentation for you to determine what method works best for you and your team, but I want you to start. Google Docs could very easily be the method for you, even though it wasn't for us. I know many people who use Asana to organize it. I use Asana for a very different purpose. There's people who use Trello. There are just so many different platforms out there to help you organize and bank your content. It gets to be something that you really incorporate and put on your task list or at least outsource for your VA or somebody to do this for you. You get to bank your content. You know what if Instagram were to shut down tomorrow? What if Facebook did shut down tomorrow for some reason? We don't want to lose all that hard work of you creating that content because Instagram is not the only place that you can put that content as well. That gets to go everywhere. LinkedIn or whatever platforms you're on. That includes emails and everything. And so we get to really bank that content.

Marketing Systems

Now, the next thing I want to start to go into is how does my social media marketing and my social media systems, how does that look? Do I have any of that put together or automated? Do I have those tabs?" ' Is that put into any kind of steps for somebody else to do for you? Because that 1000 percent gets to get delegated, outsourced or even automated soon. Now, the majority of the tasks that we do each day, our social posts that we do, our stories, everything like that. Those things can be either delegated or outsourced. They could be automated or removed from the business completely. Most likely, social media won't be removed from your business. However, maybe there's a platform you're using that isn't doing anything for the business and it's just a waste of your time, then that definitely gets to be removed from the business. And social media is one that can be delegated and automated fairly quickly. It's usually one of those first, I would say top five things. It gets delegated first as you continue to grow and scale your business.

Now, if you're not quite ready to hire your first team member, no problem. No problem whatsoever. We can automate and batch the majority of your content with software and apps. Now, your team members can do this as well. They can help you organize and put everything into your content bank and then go and pick different types of content for you and actually go and schedule it for you. Or you could schedule it and kind of organize it yourself with different apps and platforms such as Buffer. We've been using Buffer and absolutely love it. Planolly, I used Planolly in the past. However, I know they've been going through some auditing with Facebook and some other things, so it's not working quite properly. But good luck to you Planolly and hope things get good. If anyone from planolly is listening, I hope that turns around because I did love planolly a lot. Later is a very popular one as well, there are so many. There's new ones coming out every week. So there's resources out there for you to do this. And so I definitely suggest either start to batch, start and automate so that you're not sitting there spending an hour and a half every single day writing your content, picking your picture and then deciding on how you're going to post it or trying to schedule it just for the day. You can do all of this very quickly if you sit down maybe Sunday night or Monday morning, you know, for a few hours, do it for the whole week and you're ready to go. So that's a second system I want to dive into and give plenty of examples of what you can do there as well.

Sales Systems

Now, let's go into the third system I want to talk about. Your third type of system, and you'll probably have many systems inside of this, is your sales system. For example, scheduling calls. Do you have a system in place to take your potential clients down a sales journey when someone applies to work with you? What happens after they book a sales call with you? Do they receive a confirmation from you somehow via text, via email, via social media? What happens after they say yes on the sales call with you? What happens? How do you start to empower them? Do they get a contract? Everything we do when our business has a system. Everything I just ran through and your sales system can 100 percent be automated, meaning hands off. Definitely hands off. And if you want to delegate you definitely can delegate it. And it can be automated as well. Scheduling the calls: that can be automated. Sending confirmation emails: that can be automated. So much of this can be automated. Once someone says yes to work with you, sending them that the pricing, check out, payment processor plus contract: automated. Everything can be automated while still creating an incredible client experience, which is what I want to go into next.

So think about your sales systems. They're definitely important. They're probably not the first thing that you need to start to automate. I would definitely suggest freeing up some of your time with content or social media marketing first and then getting into the sales. Once you have the other two added some systems and processes and automated some of that, then start to move into sales. And then that can start to get handed off to other team members and that type of thing.

Customer Journey System

Now, this next one I want to go into is something that is going to take some experimentation from you and what you enjoy for inside of your business. And that has to do with client experience. Everybody's client experience is very different. And what they want for their clients' experience is very different as well. And what we like to do is, of course, for us to continue to scale and to create a bigger impact, it means we get to serve more people. So our goal is to create an incredible client experience from the minute that somebody sees and meets the company and meets me, to when they off board with me, if they come into all my programs, and even after operating with me when they're still in my community. Incredible client experience all the way through.

For us to be able to accomplish this incredibly huge task, we get to automate a lot of it while still creating an incredible customer experience. What you can do as well, for example, you can automate your onboarding. You can automate every single piece of your onboarding. You can automate your off boarding. You can automate so much of the client experience from when they first say yes to work with you to their first week with you, first month with you, first three months with you. And then when you off-board with them: all of that can be automated. And I want you to sort of think about, OK, how much of this? Because if you're a solo partner or you're probably doing a lot of this by yourself right now, which is OK, it's super exciting to send out, you know, that invoice and that contract. However, that definitely gets to be delegated or automated in the near future so that you can do more and more of it. If you're spending an hour per client onboarding them and you're only wanting to work four hour days, you're only going to be able to off board maybe one client. Then you've got a few of their hours, everything else in your business. So we definitely get to automate onboarding. We get to add these systems and automate this client experience that you want to create. It's something that you're going to always be improving. This is something we're always working on improving as well.

System Tools

Now, this next tool and this next thing I'm going to chat with you about, it's actually a tool that can help you with your systems. And this is probably one of my favorite tools. I'm still blown away that this even exists. I love going to their website and looking at the different things I can automatically connect together. And it's called Zappier. Pretty sure I'm saying it right. Some people call it different things. So this is such a cool tool because it connects your business processes that you didn't even know were possible to connect. So, for example, for one of our many systems we have. When someone opts into one of our programs and invests in themselves, we are notified. Our team's channel is notified instantly and it's automated through Zapier and they automatically get their enrollment email. They automatically get into our programs so they can get started right away because that's part of our client experience. We want them to be able to get started right away. We do not want any of our new clients to feel like we've got to wait days before they can get access to our course hub, get welcomed into the program, those types of things. But Zapier can connect so much. They can connect anything and everything you can think of. I want to say over 2000 different software and platforms Zappier can connect to. So, for example, your emails, your email program, whatever. So whatever you're using for your email, if it's Active Campaign, MailChimp, whatever, you can connect that with almost any other platform through Zapier.

It's like the connection tool for you. It holds the things together. So go check it out, go check out that website. You'll be blown away. It can do so much for you and your business. And also take so much time off of your hands and off of your team members hands as well. You can automate so much in your business. Now, today, we've gone through quite a few different big systems and your action item for today. And, you know, you bet that as we're wrapping this episode up, I've got an action item for you. Choose one of these systems that we walk through today. And if you don't have your content banked, that gets to be one of the first ones. And just having that organized somewhere because your content is, again, your body of work. So choose one of the systems that we walk through today and lay out every single task that goes into that particular system. Which can you automate? What can you delegate? Are there some tasks or some things that you're doing right now in your business that simply don't need to be in your business? Are they not adding value or are they not helping you generate more income? Do this action item and let me know over on Instagram, you can find me @themelissalin. I can't wait to hear about it. Your biggest take away. Send me a message. I don't bite. I can't wait to hear all about it!

Topics we cover include:

Content and Marketing Systems
Sales Systems
Customer Journey Systems
System Tools

All this and more!

Times to check out:

(5:11) What is a system?

(7:09) Why we need systems

(11:02) Banking Your Content

(16:25) Your Content Marketing System

(19:14) Your Sales System

(20:51) System Tools

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