Courtney Elmer, CEO of The EffortLESS Life®, talks about how to create processes so your business can run effectively and efficiently.
Read below or listen to find out about creating systems and processes, why mindset is only a part of your business growth, and the four primary business systems every entrepreneur needs to run your business successfully.
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Growing Your Business Requires Systems and Processes
Every time, regardless of the business, the problem of getting traffic to their door and not having enough sales always comes back to a lack of systems and processes on the back end of a business.
Courtney is an expert at working with businesses to put processes and systems in place. “I was good at noticing the holes and other things falling through the cracks. Being able to put together steps to plug the holes and create processes and systems to help the business flow more efficiently was great. I’ve always been an organized person. Although, I didn’t think that that was necessarily a strength of mine because it came naturally to me, it was very easy to do that.”
When Courtney put systems and processes in place, its revenue would rise and have more leads. But, unfortunately, most businesses obsess over infrastructure and hiring and completely forget about sales. “There’s a balance that has to happen between infrastructure and sales. You need to have systems both on the front and the back end of your business.”
When you focus primarily on systems, infrastructure, and other backend elements, you can get so bogged down in the details you completely lose sight of what’s keeping the doors open to your business! On the other end of that coin, when you focus only on sales and marketing, and you don’t have systems in place to take care of your customers, then you’re missing out on business.
Four Primary Business Systems Every Business Owner Needs
The first system Courtney advises is that every business owner has a visibility system. Your visibility system is a front-end or front-facing system. They are more commonly known as the systems that people experience when they meet your brand online.
The second system is generating revenue. How are you generating revenue? How are you setting up for scalability, recurring revenue – that’s also a front-end system.
Number three is a deliverability system on the backend of your business. What happens after someone makes a purchase with you? What happens when they use their credit card online? You want to make sure there is a follow-up or call to action, so your new consumer has more touchpoints than just their initial sale.
Deliverability on the back end helps keep your customers happy and delivers what you’ve promised efficiently and effectively. This component is all about customer experience. Suppose their experience of working with your brand was memorable. In that case, they will tell their friends, and you’ll earn their repeat business.
The fourth system Courtney advises businesses to have is an operating system. “This is all the grunt work that nobody likes to do – the bookkeeping, legal stuff, contracts, taxes, HR, knowing how to interview to find suitable candidates.
“I have a four-step interview process that we teach so you can find out if your candidate is qualified. This makes the interview process more streamlined because you can easily weed out unqualified candidates and pick your ideal teammate quickly.
“Having solid operation systems in place keeps your business running smoothly so that you don’t experience these hiccups along the way.”
Interviewing, the Onboarding Process and Team Culture
After the interview, there’s an onboarding process. What does your onboarding process look like? How are you measuring and evaluating each new team member’s performance over a certain period to determine if they are a good fit for the company?
Your onboarding process should give you a significant timeframe to determine if your candidates align with your company values. Is this going to be an excellent long-term fit? If not, you have to say it didn’t work out.
How are you creating a team culture and holding your team accountable? Providing ongoing team training resources, clearly defining the metrics they are responsible for, and showing them how to report on them is critical for team efficiency.
Visibility, Automation, and Scaling
Phase I of your business is to figure out your visibility. You have to learn how to talk to people and sell because this is foundational work. Phase two is automation and scaling. In phase two, you can bring in lower price point products.
“Before you can implement any system, you have to figure out who you are marketing to and who you’re here to serve.”
Figuring out your avatar is the precursor to everything else in your business.
The Difference Between a System and a Process
There is a difference between a system and a process. “When you think of a business system, I want you to think of the overarching map from A to B.” Systems are ever-changing, and this is why systems are not the holy grail. They can be altered along the way to meet the growing needs of your business. Processes are the step-by-step directions that can be tweaked a little bit here and there along the way, as well as you grow based on what your business needs.
The Psychology of Business
“There’s six inches between your ears, preventing you from taking the action that you need to take to bring about a different result.”
If you don’t understand business psychology, you will always continue taking the same action and getting the same result, hoping for a different one and feeling frustrated that you’re not moving towards your goal.
Focus on Jobs Within Your Zone of Genius
When you realize which aspects in your business light you up and produce energy, those are the items in your zone of genius, which you should lead and do inside your business. There are other components in your business that drain your energy. If you spend lots of time on the parts of your business that are draining your energy, you’ll be spinning your wheels. Put systems in place for the areas of your business that aren’t your zone of genius so you can focus your energy on what you enjoy.
When you simplify and build yourself out of your business with systems, your business will feel much lighter because you can automate and outsource the jobs that don’t make you happy or light up your energy.
There’s a difference between doing unpleasant tasks taking you nowhere and having to do jobs you don’t want to do temporarily to bridge the gap for creating systems. “I taught my team that we do hard things because we can.” Sometimes you’re going to have to do unpleasant things to get to your pleasure. “No one talks about that.” So many are open to visualizing what they want and think it’s just going to show up.
That’s where the inner work comes into play, which is essential, you know to the whole mindset piece. “There are so many people who say that all you need to be successful in business is your mindset and to work on your mind.” While your mindset is essential, it is a piece of a greater whole. However, you can spend your life working on your mindset and still not generate revenue in your business.