“There MUST be an easier, faster, or all-around better way to get [insert tedious task here] done!” It’s a phrase I hear all the time, so I decided to pop a question box in my Instagram stories to answer some of my audience’s questions about operations and systems! What I received did not disappoint, and I’m going to recap this lil Q&A right here. If you prefer to watch the video version, head to my Instagram page and click on the Operations highlight at the top of my profile!

But before we get into the actual questions, I want to quickly chat about operations as a whole in online business, or in really any business. Especially if you’re a solopreneur, you’ve likely gotten bogged down by paperwork and back-end administrative tasks that just aren’t your favorite way to spend time. When we do everything ourselves, it’s bound to happen at some time, especially when we’re experiencing growth and success!

I love to help entrepreneurs to streamline some of those processes and find technology that is going to help move those things along efficiently and quickly. Taking a bit of time to focus there before burnout happens it’s going to help you in a couple of ways. 

First, you’re going to gain back a ton of time if you’re running the entire show by yourself. Things that happen rather frequently in your business can usually be systematized so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Or, if you’re outsourcing and taking advantage of an assistant or someone to help you out, you’re going to gain back a lot of financial investment there if you’re not paying them hourly because a piece of technology or a certain software can get that task checked off just as well. 

Another way I see focusing on systems benefitting is that your service and processes will become more consistent. I always like to think about those times where you’re writing an email to ask a new prospect for a discovery call, or to send their proposal or contract – you know, the emails that just have to happen to move projects forward. Sometimes, you can write an amazing email and step back and think, ‘Wow, I can’t wait for this person to receive this email. This is going to make them really excited to go ahead and take the next step!’ But, we all have busy days and sometimes, the email that you’re sending with the big ask for them to invest in your services just isn’t exactly setting off fireworks. 

So – systematizing the common phases of your client process is going to put an amazing experience on autopilot. That’s exactly what I help people do, and I love it! With that, let’s get into the questions!

How do you go about prioritizing all the business tasks that need to get done? 

I have a two-part answer for this. First, I recommend taking inventory of what actually happens in your business day-to-day and month-to-month. This brain-dump will help you to uncover what is vital to move the needle forward vs what things are nice to have but not super integral to your processes. Definitely don’t skip your client processes either! The goal here is to step back and see a big picture of how you’re actually spending your time and energy.

Secondly, once all those recurring tasks are down on paper, prioritize them by ROI. What are you seeing really good results from, what actually just has to happen, and what tasks can you leave off the schedule and do them when you happen to have a little extra time on your hands? 

Next, I would look at some options for leaning on technology a little bit to handle some of this stuff. Like I was saying before, there’s software for pretty much every back-end admin task to just make your life easier and take over, so that you’re not having to manually handle them or reinvent the wheel each time. 

I always say if you do something more than two or three times in your business, and you want to maintain that piece in the process, you should systematize it! 

Lastly, for things that you don’t need to be spending time on yourself but can’t find technology to help automate – delegation is great! Bringing in a second set of hands is a great way to gain back some time to spend in the parts of the business that only you can handle.

What are the top three things that you recommend systematizing when you’re getting started in business? 

My #1 would probably be emails. It may sound really weird to say that you’re going to systematize your emails, we really do spend way too much time in our inboxes. And, if you’ve been in business for a while, you might notice that you send things out that are accomplishing the same thing pretty regularly, right? For instance, you’re sending out a contract, or proposal, or asking for a testimonial – those types of things that happen periodically, but definitely more than once or twice ever. 

These take a long time to write, but if you can write it really well one time, save it somewhere! You’re going to have to write basically this exact same email again eventually, and having it ready to go is going to help cut that time down from 20 minutes to 2. 

You can always personalize and tweak here and there after you copy and paste it, if that’s what you’re doing, but just having those standardized emails that are common in your business is a great thing. And it might seem small right now, but all those small little things add up and the less time that we can spend in the email inbox the better. 

#2 is your appointment scheduler. If you don’t already, you should have an appointment system where people can go in and find a convenient time for them that works with your schedule. This will also allow them to reschedule when something comes up, because that’s going happen occasionally, and then it will also send them the confirmation and reminder emails so that no one forgets that it’s on the books if they forgot to add it to your calendar. 

Something strange that I encountered during my virtual assistant days was that people struggled a lot with time zones. So, if you’re working with people in other time zones, sometimes it gets a little tricky and confusing. It’s a back-and-forth nightmare when they need to reschedule and it’s just going to make your life a lot easier.

So, make connecting with your prospects and clients easy on both sides. Let them book and reschedule themselves, and don’t deal with time zones. You don’t have to remember to shoot them an email and confirm – it’s all taken care of for you. 

#3 is recurring payments and payment schedules. If you are someone who’s offering an ongoing service, or you have a high-ticket service that you’re selling and people need to break up their payments, having a system for sending out those recurring invoices is essential. 

It really does take a lot of time to go down your client list, remember everyone who has outstanding payments, and do all that math. We all know the chase to follow up with clients who are overdue, and that is always super awkward. Having a system that really standardizes that whole process and you can enter all that information when they sign the contract or pay a deposit, and have those invoices and reminders sent automatically throughout your partnership is going to save you tons of time and headaches. 

What technology do you recommend when you’re just starting out? 

I would think first about how you want your client experience to go, ideally. With any of my clients, no matter where they are in business, we always start with mapping out the ideal scenario for moving your clients through the process, or whatever it is that needs to get kind of systematized and get the kinks worked out. We always start with what happens from start to finish, so that we can pick systems and reverse-engineer based on how you want the client to feel and empower them to do what you want them to do.

In terms of technology, I would definitely say that you need to have a separate inbox for everything business-related. Another story from my VA days – seeing people’s inboxes getting flooded with a lot of random sales emails from retail stores, and their grocery delivery service, and getting personal stuff mixed with business stuff is a huge no-no. Once you start getting actual client inquiries and important emails, you don’t want that to get buried under random personal emails. Email is something we all need, so a dedicated inbox for your biz is non-negotiable. You’ll thank me later.

Once you have that, you can go ahead and set up your Google Drive or similar cloud-based area so that all your files are online. In case anything, God forbid, happens to your computer or your phone, or whatever machine you save your important files on, you have everything saved.

Then, like I was saying to answer the last question, having an appointment scheduler is something super simple and very affordable to set up that’s going to save you a lot of time. You’ll quickly realize how quickly the back-and-forth emails eat up all your time, and then remembering to remind people, reschedule meetings, and all that? Ain’t nobody got time! 

Once you’re beyond those few things and you’ve got a couple of clients on your belt, it’s time to standardize some of your processes. You’ll begin to determine what your clients respond well to and what kind of flow your partnerships tend to go in, and this is when I would definitely recommend investing in a CRM program. 

CRM stands for customer relationship management or client relationship management software, and it’s really going to help you take all those moving puzzle pieces and keep them contained under one roof. Setting these up is what I do in my done-for-you services in the operations realm. My absolute favorite is Dubsado (I’m a Certified Dubsado specialist – I’m obsessed). It does everything under the sun in terms of back-end tasks and client experience. It can take your client from the moment of discovery and take them all the way to submitting an amazing testimonial form. I’m talking appointment scheduling, contract e-signing, beautiful interactive proposals and SO much more. All of these different moving pieces can also be set to trigger in a certain order depending on what’s happening and what stage in the process that your client is in. 

So having all these pieces work together and having the emails automatically attached to each piece is really the key to productivity and maintaining consistency in your client experience. You can take all of this work totally off your plate forever  if you can set it up once really well. Then, every single client who comes in the door is going to experience the same level of awesome service because it’s automated. These setups are totally my specialty, because there is a bit of a learning curve to getting it set up right and not just learning the features as you build, as you might be missing a piece or underutilizing the program because there are many tips and tricks you may not know about. 

I suck at technology, and I hate it but I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to be more efficient by using technology. Help! I don’t know what I’m doing. 

I love this one because these are the people that I work with most. The truth is, if you’re living in 2022, which you are, you just have so many options. And I totally get it! It’s really hard to know what’s going to work best for you – not only just for your business, but for your level of comfort using the actual software that you’re spending money on. 

So what I do in my operations audits is that we look at what your current processes are and what holes in your efficiency could be tightened up, and then we find solutions and programs that you’re going to feel comfortable with. And, with a lot of these programs, once they’re set up, they’re set up! The point of systematizing and automating things isn’t to be coming back in there and tinkering and messing with it all the time. The goal is to create something that you can set and forget. We think about the client experience first and how you want everything to come across so that it’s not stale or robotic, and then we write really good emails and be thoughtful about how we set them up first, so that you don’t have to go in and change stuff constantly. 

Secondly, I would make sure that the programs that you choose have really good customer service. So if you’re wondering if something is possible in a certain software, or if you have any questions, there’s going to be a chat or support line that you can call and get an answer quickly. Take a peek at the reviews and the ratings for some of these programs that you’re choosing and the type of support that you can expect. 

Lastly, if you’re just really really friggin stuck, let me know and I’m happy to take a peek in there and see what you’ve got so far! I’ve used every program for all this stuff so I can absolutely point you in the right direction! You might just not be using the best software or program for your business firstly, and then there may be a mismatch in terms of your comfort using it and what your user experience is like. 

You have so many options, and there comes a point where just Googling to try to find the perfect solution isn’t going to cut it anymore. If you’re really serious about tightening up your time and your schedule, but also, more importantly, your client experience and really coming across like the expert you are, these systems are going to help you do that. 

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Thank you to everyone who sent me DMs, comments, booked virtual coffees to run things by me, and for giving me the insight to put this Q+A together! If you have any questions at all, I am here to be your sounding board! You can always feel free to shoot me an email at contact@alinascarcella.com, book a virtual coffee with me to chat about your specific situation, or just stay in touch on Instagram!