The One Thing You Need to do to Get Your (Business) Backend in Shape

How’s your back-end doing so far this year?

In general, the more order you have in your business, the greater success you’ll have. It’s easier to navigate, and your confidence will abound. Not to mention the fact that others will jump at the chance to work with you because it’s just so easy.

One of my favorite things to do is to help business owners clean up behind the scenes of their businesses. It takes time and tools but having clean systems and processes are what will help you to turn your business into a long-term game in the end.

Let me paint a picture of what might have happened in your business:

• You sent an email that failed because of a glitch with your email service provider.
• You missed a client appointment because of a failure in your calendar.
• A new client didn’t get onboarding materials because a trigger wasn’t set up properly.
• A project stalled out because no one knew who was waiting for what.

Does any of that sound familiar?

We’ve all had systems backfire or fail in our businesses, myself included. This often happens because you have all the workflows and next steps in your head, but you’ve failed to write them down–for yourself or your team.

Unless you’ve had a team on your side for a while, it’s hard to outsource something like putting systems and workflows in place. You know exactly what needs to be done because you’ve done it so many times. But trying to have a team work on it without it documented is like your toddler teaching your teenager to drive. Not a good idea.

What to do instead? Get your systems in place!

Here are some tips get your business backend in shape:

• As you do something inside your business–onboard a new client, create graphics for a blog post, research for social media posts, work on a client project, etc., write down everything you do in a vertical list. Break it all down, like you’re writing a recipe.

• Then, take that list and turn it on its side, so it’s horizontal. This allows your team members to see how things move from one step to the next. Think of it like a Trello board, with each step being a card you can move from one column to the next.

• When you pass this workflow along to a team member, you can do so with a Loom video that explains each step. This might help you to see what holes, if any, you have in the process.

• Stay flexible: no two workflows are ever the same, even from team member to team member within the same business. It depends on the skills of the team and on how your business operates.

Having a better backend isn’t fun to set up, but once you do you’ll have loads of free space so you can be the CEO of your business.

Big businesses have project managers, chiefs of staff, operations managers and the like. For smaller businesses, your workflows can handle some of these roles.

And the sooner you have your backend in the shape you dream of, you get to be the visionary in your business. Which is why you went into business in the first place, right?