Systemizing Your Startup 101 [Resource Page]
Systemizing Your Startup 101
Send this to any founder who’s life is too hectic
By April Dykman
Loving your work doesn’t mean being a slave to your business.
But when you’re the CEO, life can be chaotic. It’s easy to wind up chained to your desk, doing repetitive tasks because you can’t trust anybody else to get it right. Meanwhile you have no time to work on what’s important, and your personal life is nonexistent.
Sure, you can do it all, but you have to wonder if it’s the best use of your time. And what would happen to your company if you couldn’t show up for work tomorrow? Could your employees take over in your absence? Could you sell the company, or would it fail without you?
Systematizing your business is your ticket out of chaos. With the right systems and checklists in place, you can liberate yourself from mundane, day-to-day tasks, grow your business, and get your life back.
Read on to learn specific tactics for replacing yourself and systematizing your company.
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Introducing the Systems Series.
- Systems engineer Kelly Azevedo had a client who spent a lot of time training an employee, but when the employee left, the entire company was thrown into chaos. The client had to start at zero, training another employee to replace the first. That turned into a vicious cycle, wasting time and allowing important details to fall through the cracks. Kelly discusses how to create a well-documented system to break the cycle.
- Panesar.net creator Jas Panesar lost count of how many times he bailed on his girlfriend, friends, and family to take care of work obligations. “It was really chaotic because work was my life, and I didn’t want it to be,” he says. “I really let down a lot of people.” He describes the systems he used to turn that around and get more done, all while traveling to 17 cities in one year.
- The phrase “replacing yourself” makes some CEOs nervous. After all, someone needs a lot of business experience to handle sophisticated marketing, administration, and customer service techniques, right? Wrong, according to Harold Mann, the founder of Mann Consulting. He develops business systems that break complex processes into smaller components that a recent college grad could handle. Once you have a system that works, the system will to enable people to be successful, regardless of their experience, says Harold. He shares this method along with other ways to delegate and free up time to focus on the big picture.