Sustainably Scaling Your Online Business With A Systems Strategist
How a system strategist can help you grow your business without burning out
Are you thinking about scaling your online business? Maybe you want to bring on team members, introduce a new service, raise your prices, or serve your clients more deeply.
Scaling is a big deal – it means your business is thriving and ready for more growth! But, it can also be a challenging time as you figure out what processes work in your business and which need to be tweaked. This is where a systems strategist can be a lifesaver, helping you set yourself up for success without getting overwhelmed.
For many entrepreneurs, the thrill of scaling leads to burnout because they’re either:
- So focused on admin and behind-the-scenes work that they don’t get to enjoy the growth and success they’ve built.
- Skip right past the systems side of scaling which leads to messy processes, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities.
A systems strategist plays a crucial role here by offering an expert perspective on your business processes to ensure that your new growth doesn’t come at the expense of a stellar client experience or your own peace of mind.
Understanding The Role Of A Systems Strategist
Think of a systems strategist as a master planner for your business. They look at both the big picture and tiny details of your business to elevate your client experience and streamline your business operations.
My role as a systems strategist is to make your business more efficient so you can accomplish more without working harder or longer hours.
The Importance Of Systems Strategy In Scaling Your Business
As you scale your business, your systems keep everything running like clockwork. But even if your systems are working for your business now, they might struggle under the weight of growth if you don’t have a strategy in place.
- If you create a new service, have you thought through every interaction you’ll have with your client as you work together?
- If you expand your team, do you know exactly who will be responsible for communicating with your client and how information will be shared?
- If you serve your clients more deeply with personalized proposals or regular check-ins, how will you manage your workload?
- If you increase your prices, does your experience match the quality your clients will expect from you?
Take one of my past designer clients, Alli Beck. She came to me with a strong understanding of her project processes, but the manual setup of forms and emails was eating up her time. In her words, ‘As my business grew, I needed a way to not start from scratch every time.’ Alli needed a way to manage her new service, VIP Design Days, without drowning in admin work.
Want to know what we did to help Alli as she shifted into this new era of her business? Then you’ll have to keep on reading!
Key Areas In Your Business A Systems Strategist Can Optimize
As a systems strategist, I help you scale your business sustainably by equipping it with the right tools and processes. Three key areas where systems strategy makes a huge difference in your online business are client experience, revenue, and workload.
Elevating Client Experience
I’ve written a detailed blog post on how to create a good client experience, but here’s a quick summary: your client experience encompasses all the interactions a client has with your business and it heavily influences their satisfaction with your work.
My job is to make every step of the client journey supportive, personalized, and effortless to keep your clients coming back for more. This can involve writing canned emails that share important project information or setting up a client portal for easy access to all project materials.
Enhancing Revenue Possibilities
Often, scaling your business is about boosting your revenue so you can take more vacations, reinvest in your business, or expand your team. But setting new income goals and raising your prices isn’t enough. Your systems also need to be ready for this growth.
As a systems strategist, I can implement tools to help you track your revenue streams and identify your most successful marketing channels – whether it’s referrals, Instagram, or Google. This allows you to focus your marketing efforts where you see a strong return on investment.
Plus, I’ll help you delight your existing clients so they return to you again and share your name with their community. This could look like refining your forms and proposals so they match the high-quality work your clients expect or creating offboarding workflows that check in with past clients and keep your business at the top of their minds.
Easing Workload
Here’s the thing: growing your business doesn’t have to mean piling more work on yourself. Yes, your business has evolved with new offers, team members, and clients, but with a systems strategist, your workload doesn’t have to grow too.
When I step into your business, I uncover how you work best through business process mapping. From when you need feedback from clients to what days of the week you like to have meetings.
With this information, I create systems and workflows designed for your productivity. I’ll add automatic reminders so invoices are paid on time, craft calendar templates so meetings only occur when you want, and add tools to track the progress of your projects.
These automated workflows allow you to take on more work and scale your business without getting bogged down in administrative tasks.
Conclusion
Let’s circle back to Alli. Remember, Alli had a great manual process that worked for her design business. But as she introduced new services, she knew she couldn’t keep up with all the extra admin work and deliver an exceptional client experience.
Alli invested in a Dubsado VIP Week with me to overhaul her entire system. We set up automatic workflows, wrote canned emails, and created templates for her services. I took all her complicated processes and made them work seamlessly for her and her clients so she could focus on her design work, not admin tasks!
Whether you’re shifting your services, expanding your team, or scaling your business in another way, having strategic systems in place is key to making your growth smooth and sustainable.
Reach out today and book your Discovery Call if you’re ready to scale your business and elevate your processes strategically!
