Streamlining Systems: Strategies for Seasoned Business Owners

Unlock the secrets to supercharged business efficiency with my latest strategies for seasoned entrepreneurs. I'm Karalee, and in this episode, I'm sharing a wealth of knowledge on optimizing your business operations, beyond the basics of trimming unnecessary components. Step into the world of strategic consolidation as we navigate the ecosystem of your software tools and team dynamics. Is each application you're using truly essential? Are you capitalizing on the full potential of your team's strengths? Prepare for a transformation as we dissect these elements, providing a foundation for a sleeker, more productive workflow.

As we wrap up our exploration, I extend a personal invitation for collaboration and tailored support. The doors to a complimentary DIY operations audit are wide open, a golden chance to customize the productivity tips specific to your business ambitions. Let's connect further - engage with me on Instagram or through my 'work with me' form, because your voice shapes our future discussions. Together, we'll navigate the challenges of business efficiency with actionable steps and individual guidance. This is your path to streamlined success, and my commitment is to accompany you every inch of the journey.

Operations Audit: theproductivityimpact.com/landing/operations-audit
Want to work with me - head to theproductivityimpact.com/work-with-me to learn more.

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Transcript

Karalee: 0:51

Hello, hello, amazing humans, welcome back to Neurodivergent Bytes. I am your host, Karalee. Today we're going to be talking about streamlining systems for established business owners. An established business owner is more along the lines of business for years. They're known for a product, service, etc. Or even have a team supporting them. You're at a different level than starting out. The operations for this size of a business is going to look very different than someone starting out.

Karalee: 1:21

Let's dive into the steps to start streamlining your systems and, in turn, streamlining your operations. For one, streamlining means to make simpler or more efficient. When you're wanting to streamline, you're looking at how can I make this as simple as possible yet as efficient as possible. This is one of the most fun parts about what I do for business owners is. This piece is really hard for a lot of people because our brain just doesn't function in that manner. That's totally fine. That is where I come in, an operation specialist to be able to support you in that manner.

Karalee: 1:58

Grab a notebook, grab a pen and I want you to start brainstorming. Start thinking about the software that you use. These are things like ClickUp, maybe, vimeo, maybe Buzzsprout, whatever that is. Start thinking about the softwares that you use? Does it serve what its purpose is? Does it actually serve how it's supposed to? Does it do it well? Could it be more efficient? We're thinking about the softwares, the things that support us in running our businesses. These could also be processes although today I'm really focusing on the softwares, but these could also be processes in which you are using and are these systems and these softwares that you're using to help with your processes? Are they actually serving you or could they be way more efficient? Chances are they can be more efficient, but let's just start with. Are they actually serving you and are they doing what they're supposed to be doing? Your action item is to actually list each software that you use. Grab a pen and paper, start listing the softwares that you use and what does it do for you.

Karalee: 3:08

For example, I use ClickUp as a software. What does ClickUp do for me? It helps me create a central hub for everything to go together because I can link everything in. I know where to go. I keep track of all of my tasks there. It is my central hub. What does it do for me? It helps me stay organized. It helps me be able to know what to work on each day. It helps me long-term to map out projects. Is it serving what it's supposed to do? Yes, yes, it truly is. Now, could it be more efficient? Probably.

Karalee: 3:42

I am constantly streamlining things in my business as I learn more things, as I pivot things like that. Streamlining it doesn't mean that it's a one-and-done thing, just like when you are building a business. It doesn't mean that you build it once and you leave it set. Now there are some things we're not getting into that. But is this actually serving you? Your action items to list each software you use and what it does for you. I just gave the example of ClickUp.

Karalee: 4:07

I want you to also, if you're ready for it, take a step further. Can you consolidate or eliminate any of these? Consolidate, bring them together, merge them together, or can you eliminate any of those? Maybe you're paying for something you're not really using. You can look at your bank accounts to see what you're paying for. You can look at your bookmarks and see what you have bookmarked. I just did this when I did my business audit. I was like I'm not really using this, I don't really need this anymore, or I'm like I could put these two things together, or I found a new alternative that actually served me better. But first step is actually listing it out and saying what it does for you and if you are happy with it, okay.

Karalee: 4:47

Next, let's talk about the team members that you have. If you're an established business, chances are you have at least one team member all the way up to however many, right, are they being utilized as you would like? I want you to really think into how you're feeling about the team members. They're what they're doing for you, how they're interacting with you. Do you think you are utilizing them to the best of their ability? Okay? So if not, I want you to start brainstorming on how this could be more efficient. All right, just start thinking everything that you can think of when it comes to each team member. Throw it down on paper and just start thinking it through. Getting your mind thinking about these things is going to ultimately help you be able to really streamline things moving forward. But you've got to know where you're starting in order to know where you have to go. Right.

Karalee: 5:35

That foundation, so your action item, is to list each team member and what they do for you. Simple what is their title or what do they do specifically? For example, I have a virtual assistant. What does she do for me? She edits my podcast. Yes, she edits this podcast. She helps me then take this podcast and repurpose things. So essentially she's a virtual assistant, but she has specific tasks that she does. So you can literally say what their title is right and mark down what they do. Does that feel good to you or does it not feel good? And we can kind of go from there. It feels good, fantastic.

Karalee: 6:14

If it doesn't, we need to brainstorm a little bit further. And, if you're ready to take that next step, list their strengths. What do they really excel at? What do they love to do? Right, what do you see them doing really well for you? Can we capitalize on that? Essentially, like, can we utilize that better? Okay, so there's lots of brainstorming, lots of thinking going on here. So these are the two things that I touched on today. These are just two. Right, which software isn't serving you well and which team members aren't being utilized to the best of their abilities or their strengths? Right? You end up with a lot of bottlenecks if you don't have at least these two things figured out.

Karalee: 6:52

Among other things, all right, and as a reminder, bottlenecks are when things slow down significantly in your business. A business audit will identify a lot of bottlenecks. An operations audit will identify a lot of bottlenecks. Having someone that is really good at seeing, oh man, this is a really slow process. What can we do to make this more streamlined, to where it's basically costing you more money to not have it streamlined when it would be to streamline it? All right. That is what preventative maintenance right, we want to see it before it becomes an actual problem.

Karalee: 7:26

All right, and in the businesses that I work with that are established business owners, I literally see bottlenecks three months before they become an actual problem. So if I would let them sit there, they would become a big problem for the CEO. But because I see them normally three months in advance, I then start putting in place different systems, processes, refining things before it even becomes a true bottleneck. Right, things don't slow down super bad, they just slow down slightly, but I'm right there, catching it before it really becomes a problem, and there's so many more things that go into that. But I just wanted to kind of like refine that If you have an operations specialist in your business or operations director, anyone that does operation stuff like they should be able to see these bottlenecks before they become big problems, but you have to make sure that they actually have access to the actual operations of your business and that they're allowed or you're.

Karalee: 8:20

You know you guys are talking about what the input is from yourself, from their perspective, from other teammates perspective. All of these things help prevent bottlenecks from becoming a big, big slowdown in your business in the future. Okay, because this affects your operations greatly. All right, when there's bottlenecks, there is tension, there is stress, there's wasted time, so many more things. So then we start. You know so many more things happen there.

Karalee: 8:48

But think back, like what happens when things start slowing down in your business? Right, you get really, really frustrated and stressed and you think maybe you're doing something wrong or you're, like you know, have a mental breakdown. You know we don't want any of those things, okay. So I'm not gonna go any farther into this, but I want you to take those two action steps to really figure out what software you're using, what ones are serving you, which ones aren't, and can you streamline any of them? And then also list out each team member, what they do for you. Does it feel good? Can you utilize their strengths better? Right, those are your two action steps for this week, right?

Karalee: 9:23

And if you want to learn more because I only covered two things right, grab my free DIY operations audit and in that I explore the five most common bottlenecks that I personally see in business and maybe you can catch some of yours before they become big issues, or maybe implement things that you're like oh, I didn't realize I actually did need to do that. So this will support you in streamlining all of those things along with your operations, to have it more smooth sailing, right? We want a very smooth sailing ship, right. We don't want the people rowing the ship to not know what's going on, right, we want them to be working together and we want it to be super efficient. So you can also learn more about how you can work together, how we can work together to streamline your operations.

Karalee: 10:06

Okay, because there is more than just this free DIY operations audit, and you can head to theproductivityimpact. com and you can head to the work with me button at the top and really get fill out that form, really get a firm understanding of how we can work together and even kind of just go from there, right? So I'd love to hear from you, head on over to IG and share with me some of your takeaways or from this episode. And if you want to learn something else too, like totally send me. Fill out in the show notes the topic request form, because I would love to be able to support you in the best way possible and really get you moving in bite-sized action steps to your next goal right? So we're having full momentum and if you give me what topics you'd like to be covered, I can specifically help you be able to do that. So if you have any questions, go ahead and let me know. But bye for now.