Full Episode Transcription

Nicole Smith 0:02
Welcome to take control with Nicole, as business owners, we experience firsthand the fine line between our personal and business life. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce, overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, hello. And thank you for joining me for another fabulous episode of take control with Nicole. Today, we’re going to be looking at a topic that as you can imagine, I get a tiny bit excited about which is processes and systems and looking at how your business is actually created. All of those little areas or big areas that actually make up the ecosystem of what your business is all about, and how you operate each and every day. Sometimes I have conversations with people and they come to me and they say I have no processes in my business right now. la dee da dee da, whatever it is. And I actually say, hey, hang on a second. How are you operating? What is the first thing you do in the morning? How do you support your clients? What do you do when this happens? They are your processes. Yes, you may not have designed them with a particular thought in mind. They have ganache CLI grown and supported you to exactly where you are right now. And how fabulous that you’ll become aware that the way that it has been, you’re ready to evolve it to really support you and your business to take it to that next level. So sit back, grab a coffee, grab a wine, whatever time you’re tuning in, enjoy. I would love to know afterwards. What is a system in your business that you have now just become aware of.

Morning, everybody, How are we? I am super excited this week is going to be fabulous. I love coming online live, masterclasses, speaking with all the people. So this week for me is going to be fabulous. Every day we’re going live. We’ve got our master class on on Thursday, which is all about taking control, and really bringing that ease and flow into your day up. Good morning, how are you? Nice to see you. So today, we’re actually going to be talking about the top processes that you can introduce into your business, or the should should consider introducing into your business that is really going to again, bring that ease and simplicity and flow into the way that you operate each and every day. So what does it mean when we talk about processes and systems. So it systems in a nutshell, can either mean tech can either mean that online applications that really support your business. However, what we’re going to be focusing in on today is the systems and the elements of your business that actually make the operations of your business flow beautifully. So these are like the funnel areas that really like departments. If you think about in the bigger corporate scary space. It’s the Departments of your business, that have those actionable tasks that you move through each and every day.

So the first one I want to have a chat about is operations. So how do you work? What is it that you actually do in your business? Are you a copywriter? Or your web developer? Are you a coach? Who are you? What do you actually do? Actually pop it in the chat below if you’re on live and you know, share, I’d love to connect and see what you’re all about as well. But whatever it is, so I support my clients by designing and developing processes and systems that really help them to create ease into their world. And how we actually do that is through the mapping of what is actually important to you, and what systems and structures Do you need and then applying it into the tech and making it an implementation process. We had just a bit of a connection there. Hello, a life coach. Fabulous. And what about you rare seed agency? What are you What’s your business and what do you support? How do you support your clients? So if we talk about the operations, let’s think about all of those things that you do in the background of your business as well. So yes, you have client facing activities. But these are the things that actually run the business.

So what are we going to do, we’ve got your financials. So what systems do we have in place that allow you to be fully on top and aware of your numbers. Now, with any of these things that we’re talking about today, it’s about being able to sort of sit in here. And know that if it is not your area of expertise, that you can outsource, you can contact an expert, who will be able to a, either do it for you, or come in and set up that system for you that you can start to maintain, and keep that process flowing each and every day. So another thing to think about is your sales and marketing. What are your processes there? What are the most important things to you? How are you going to actually action those items as well. So for instance, if you have a, you may not have a marketing plan right now that I’m sure that you’re on social media. And you are you may be doing emails, or you may be you probably have a website, all of those things are part of those operational processes that we need to keep an eye on, and make sure that they are maintained, and be able to make your business or keep your business running. So really, it’s about having the understanding of what is required. And this goes across all of the things that we’re talking about today, marketing and sales, accounting and finance your client experience oh, now that is an important one, when you are actually engaging your clients, from the moment that you have the initial conversation with them. Where and how does that workflow look like? What does it look like? Hello, good morning.

Just interrupting this episode for one little message. If you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in Connect, we have a tight control with the cold Facebook community, right over there on Facebook, that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community, we are looking to really take action in our businesses, and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to come on over and join our community and connect with us. Community is the essence of everything in business, being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other are how fabulous, I hope to see you over there, pop on over to Facebook, take a troll with Nicole, see you soon.

So, we’re engaging our clients right at the start. What does that experience look like for you? And how does it feel for your clients? Do they feel that it’s already really nice and easy? Do they already understand how you’re going to that experience? As you go through that process? Can they feel that from the moment that you have initial contact? Now we’re looking at do you have a booking calendar? Do you have an easy way to collect information? What is your onboarding process look like? Do you have an online agreement, proposal software? Or is it all sort of a bit clunky and mismatched and there’s not much not a timely method that you go through to get there. That’s just the onboarding process. And then once you’re actually working with your clients, do you have measures and operations and processes in place that will make sure you are keeping on your due dates, that you are communicating with your clients that there is that allowance of understanding what your requirements are, what the expectations of the client are? What’s your delivery dates? What are your community? Sorry, I’ve got a few disconnections this morning, Instagram or my internet? Who knows? Yeah, so it’s all of those little elements that together that little micro micro elements, but together, they create that full operational experience for your clients.

So yeah, top processes, operations behind the scenes, how do all the things run? What and how do you even like your diary to be managed? If you have an assistant who’s coming in to manage your appointments, or your inbox? How do you like to have that done? What are your processes for creating your marketing? You send out a weekly email, how does it actually look? Where are you planning that content? Where is it going live? Do you have a schedule at a time that those emails go out each and every week? Do you have a special format that you’d like to create? Oh, good morning, how are you to send you pop in. How are you? What are your favourite processes in your business, Georgia, do you have some that you love? We’re just sort of talking all about the things have spoken about some operational stuff, marketing and sales. We’re just into talking about that. I know a big one. Especially for small businesses that can take up a lot of time is our social media planning. And being able to introduce something that is easy, that you love that really takes that like ickyness out of it. Now with all of these things, each and every one of us is so unique, and we love to do things in different ways. So what we can do is explore the opportunities, test those things out and find the ones that really support you. And then if you’re going to outsource and bring on an OBM or a VA, or outsource social media all together, you already have a bit of an understanding on how that process works.

Client journey, yes, we were just talking about the client journey process. So important, isn’t it, I was talking about how, at right at the start from that initial conversation, how that all connects those little micro moments through from the initial through to the onboarding through to the actually working. And then obviously, the off boarding as well, that’s something sometimes we forget about is that actual tying off of that relationship, sometimes you may have project based activities that you do for your clients. So that’s quite good, a quite clear start and end date. Other times your ongoing relationship may just come to a natural end, which is how fabulous that it’s arrived at that point, you both know that there’s something else that needs to happen right now. But being able to tie that up, request a testimonial. That’s something that you know, a lot of us do forget about. And having a process in place already. That it might be as simple as you know, I love click up. And within click up, I actually have some standard email templates in there, that and have a forming cricket that captures that testimonial at that point. So when I finish working with my clients, I send them that email. And I say, you know, thanks all the fun stuff. I’d love it if you could provide some feedback for me. Because it’s not only the testimonial we want, we want to know how you experience that journey working with us, what can we actually improve for next time. So I think that’s with all of these things in our businesses, nothing stuck. Nothing is put into place and then not movable.

The idea with business, we learn things each and every day. And as we learn those new things, how fabulous that we can evolve those processes to what the new thing looks like. It may only be a little tweaks. But every time we bring on or we learn something new, I love that because that means that it’s we’ve got that new piece of information that we can do something slightly better, we can save ourselves another five minutes, we can whatever it might be, make sure that we’re creating that space, we’re making things streamlined, we’re enjoying what we’re doing. And ultimately, our clients have been happy with the the journey that they have gone on. And also for your future clients, you know that any things that can be improved for next time, you’re all aware of those and implementing those things straightaway. So as soon as you onboard that next client fabulous, how amazing.

So yeah, Today we’ve just spoken about a few things about the different processes and the different systems ultimately, of those funnels in your business that are important to focus in on. But I would love to know if you are watching in the replay, are there any particular processes that you find are a little bit icky in your business right now? And what could you do right now that could make those small, incremental changes to move on to that next evolution of how you operate in your business. Right. That’s it for today. I hope you have a fabulous day. And I’ll see you tomorrow, bye. I can’t union are thinking about your operations and the way that you work each and every day slightly differently. Look at how those funnels are those silos of activities, really the building blocks to how you look at your business, how you can design your systems and your processes and ultimately, go right back to the foundations, your workflows, the way that you want your business to operate each and every day.

Take a moment, put some time in you’re planning to actually have a little review of what is actually going on in your world, what’s working really well and it’s something that just sings every time that you go through that motion, versus something that you know, feels a little clunky, is making things just that little bit more awkward on how to do the things each and every day. They’re the places that we need to start doing those little tweaks adding a new system or maybe not Maybe it’s looking at how we’re actually utilising the system in your everyday to bring it into a new way a new phase of operations or support your business now, and also, as you move to wherever it is that you are heading, I’d love to know where you land on all of that. I love to talk about processes each and every day. So pop on over into my DMS on Instagram, and let’s have a conversation if you get stuck, if you’re just not sure which way to go, pop on over. I am going to leave you with this. And that’s a quote that I use all the time. And I think it is so so relevant. So true across so many things. One hour of planning will save you 10 hours of doing. If you take that moment to look at how your daily or you’re bigger operations of your business of running. Imagine how much more efficient things can run. So you can actually be living and working in the areas of your business that actually make you light up. Have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom by now.

Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social shares? If not, please come on over Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I would love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time. See you then.