Without systems, you'll find you get busier and busier as your business grows.
You may also find your business slows in growth because it's become too dependent on you and your time. The longer you leave it before you start on your systems, the worse life can get.
There are two other ingredients of structure in a business, apart from systems. Those are, creating a team and using KPIs for roles.
You can systemise a business 80% and the other 20% is humanising. Humanising is having the people skills to turn staff into a team, who then contribute to refining your systems while they use them.
There's little point in having systems if your team won't use them.
Introducing weekly team meetings where KPIs are discussed has been found to be an effective "glue" that makes employees stick to the systems. That's another topic included in business mentoring.
Systems are made up of three main ingredients - Processes, Policies and Procedures.
The fastest way to systemise your business is to start with listing all processes in your business. These are the big steps someone follows to achieve an outcome.
Policies are the rules of how you do business. They are also your WHY you carry out the steps in a process or in a procedure.
Procedures are the detailed steps in a process. They are the specific HOW-to ingredients.
It may sound confusing but that's where a business mentor will take the confusion and guesswork out of getting started and building your systems fast, including how to include videos in your systems.
1. More Time
You'll find you have a lot more time in your day, to the point where you can start to take whole days or multiple days off in the week.
2. An Autonomous Team
Employees can become autonomous, needing no supervision from you at all, when you include weekly team meeting discussions about KPIs with your systems.
3. Less Mistakes, Happy Customers
When employees follow systems, they make fewer mistakes. Fewer mistakes mean fewer unhappy customers. That means fewer poor Google Reviews and that means more customers.
4. Greater Consistency
McDonalds built a global empire because of their focus on consistency. Consistency is the key ingredient to faster business growth.
5. Faster Growth
With clients often seeing multi-million dollar income growth in less than a year it confirms the power of systems in a business that the whole team uses.
6. Higher Profit Margins
Systems reduce rework and mistakes and increase synergy and harmony with employee relationships. These all lead to higher profit margins, often 3% to 15% within a year, seen by many clients.
7. Freedom
With comprehensive systems in place that your team are all using you'll find you have more freedom.
To be able to take time off, to work on your business more and choices about how often you want to work or take holidays as often as you like, wherever you like, without a worry in the world.
Having been a franchisee and taking a business to a franchisor level, and mentoring dozens of businesses in franchises, you'll benefit from that direct insight to shortcut your development work.
Numerous clients over decades have set their businesses up to operate under management, without them having to be there.
That's where a practical understanding of systems, not theory or guesswork is the key to a more profitable business and enjoying your life by implementing systems.
TESTIMONIALS
"I first met Tim between businesses. He helped me to buy a kitchen renovation business and then built it and systemised it ready for a manager, who he also helped me to hire. I then travelled the world with my wife for 2 months and didn't go back to work. I sold it two years later, for 10 times what I initially paid for it, as a business under management, ready to franchise."
Shane
House of Kitchens - Sydney
"When I met Tim my business I had been in business for over 15 years and was working 55 hours per week. Two years later I can and have gone on holidays to Indonesia to go surfing for two months, without contact with my business.
I work when I want and my team work without my supervision. Life is great!"
Chris Hislop
Whitelight Electrical - Sunshine Coast
"I was working 80 hours a week, every week when I met Tim.
10 months later my business had grown over 200%, I had a great team, systems in place, KPIs and weekly management reports. My business operated smoothly and profitably - without me, and we then travelled around Australia in a motor-home for 2 years. It was fantastic."
Clint
Electrician - Townsville