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    SORTED!: Essential systems for successful small businesses
    SORTED!: Essential systems for successful small businesses
    SORTED!: Essential systems for successful small businesses
    Ebook241 pages2 hours

    SORTED!: Essential systems for successful small businesses

    By Alice Jennings

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    About this ebook


    Are you running your business or is it running you?

    Running a small business can take over your life but it doesn’t have to be that way. Choosing and using the right technology and systems can transform the way your business works and this book shows you how!

    No matter how technophobic you are, Sorted! will quickly helpyou find the small changes that will make a big difference to your business. If you’re more tech savvy, you’ll love the ninja tips to take your business to the next level. Feel more confident in your choice of technology and systems for the future, because whatever your plans are, you need the right systems in place to help you achieve them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPractical Inspiration Publishing
    Release dateSep 19, 2019
    ISBN9781788600972
    SORTED!: Essential systems for successful small businesses
    Author

    Alice Jennings

    Alice Jennings loves solving problems! From her time in the lab during her PhD research and then in a corporate environment as a management consultant and process improvement expert, Alice has always looked for ways to make things work better, quicker and smarter. As a qualified ‘coder’ she is able to understand the technology on a deep level while her easy and friendly manner enable her to explain complex systems in a way that is easy to understand. She is passionate about enabling small businesses to use technology and systems to help them punch above their weight. Alice’s mission is to help business owners make informed choices in the systems and tools they use by giving them the information they need to confidently take their business to the next level and resist being bamboozled by people selling the next big idea. Since starting her own small business she has worked with over 200 business owners through webinars, workshops and one to one consultancy; sharing simple tips that enable better working as well as helping implement more complex systems to support growth and reduce stress.

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      Book preview

      SORTED! - Alice Jennings

      Chapter 1

      Getting started

      Please adopt this mantra:

      I know best for my business

      Starting a business is a bit like having a baby. Terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. The start of something new, and suddenly it feels like everyone thinks they can give you unsolicited advice.

      You may not have had a baby but if you are reading this book you are probably thinking of starting, or have already started, your business. Fantastic news! And congratulations.

      If there is one thing you take from this book then I hope it is this…

      …you are the very best person to make decisions for your business

      No one else has the deep understanding of your hopes and goals for it, the way it makes you feel when you get up in the morning or when it keeps you awake at night. You, like ‘mother’, know best.

      However, you are only able to make the best decision for your business if you have the correct information to enable you to choose from the many options out there, and pick the very specific combination of systems, tools and technologies that are right for your business, budget and your personal style.

      It’s so easy to meet someone who has tried a particular website designer or software tool that gave them great results and be persuaded that if you do just what they did then you will get great results also. But this is the same as suggesting that the diet that worked brilliantly for your friend will also work for you, or that your perfect house is also your brother’s perfect house. Different things work for different people.

      As you work through this book I will share the key systems and tools that a small business can use. Note that I say can, not should, because some of these will be relevant for you and some will not. And that’s just fine!

      What I hope is that you can make a clear choice about all the things I share and be able to allocate them to one of three categories:

      •something you should definitely try

      •something that may work for you in the future

      •something that is just not relevant.

      Then you can get on with doing the real work of growing your business and doing the work you love.

      At the end of each chapter is a worksheet with a summary and checklist. These are also available to download and print out from my website: www.alicejennings.co.uk/book-bonuses

      The worksheets challenge you to think about your business and decide whether any of the systems I talk about in that chapter could bring value to your business. It also asks you to prioritise the system depending on how much you could use it right now vs in one year or in three years, based on your plans for your business.

      By completing the worksheet for each chapter, you will end up with a list of actions that you would like to take for your business, each with a priority. At the end of the book we will look at how you can turn this into a clear plan and if you choose, use a system to help you manage to make it into a reality.

      If you carry out the plans then your business will be efficient; you will save time and money. In a nutshell, you will be SORTED!

      The SORTED Framework

      I’m on a mission… to help small business owners find the right systems and technology to save them time and money.

      I’ve been on this mission for a few years now and it has led me to create the SORTED Framework. Once you have identified your spot in the framework it enables you to defend yourself against well-intentioned advice and over-zealous salespeople, and to work out what systems and technology are appropriate for your business right now.

      It’s pretty simple (as all the best ideas tend to be) and I’d like to share it with you now. So without further ado I present…. (drum roll please):

      The SORTED Framework

      The SORTED Framework is based on two simple rules and is designed to help you identify what systems and technology are appropriate for your business right now. The two rules are:

      Let me explain a little more:

      Rule 1. All businesses have three departments

      Many of my clients are sole traders or very small teams. When I start talking about departments it is easy to dismiss this as something that might happen when you are bigger, but getting your departments sorted out early on is key to a calm and stress-free business.

      Let’s think about a big business. It will have a sales and marketing team responsible for getting customers through the door. The clients they attract are then served by the operations team, who are responsible for the ‘doing’ bit of the business, whether that is a product or a service. The third area of the business consists of support services such as Finance, who make sure you get paid, IT, Human Resources, Facilities and Security. All these support services together make up what is often known as a ‘back office’.

      Each of these three areas are critical to the business succeeding and if you took one out then the business would fail.

      In a small business it is very easy to ignore the need for these three departments and to focus on operations or sales and marketing, letting the other areas slide. Acknowledging you need the three departments and taking steps to ensure each department gets time allocated to it will reduce stress and improve cash flow in your business.

      Each ‘department’ has responsibility for different tasks, all of which come together to make the business work.

      Figure 1: The three ‘departments’ found in every business with examples of the activities that each is responsible for

      Rule 2. There are three stages of business

      1. Getting started

      2. Going steady

      3. Finding freedom

      Figure 2: The three stages a small business will typically go through

      Getting Started is a longer phase than most people think it will be and lasts for about two years for many businesses, but can be longer. This is the stage when you are finding out exactly what it is you want to do and learning how to speak to your clients in a way they will understand.

      Going Steady: Once you have some ways of working that are repeatable and you know will bring in some sales, you have reached the Going Steady phase. Congratulations! Many people are happy to stay at this level forever, adding a few new things from time to time and tweaking their offer and that’s great. Some people will want to move to the third level, which is Finding Freedom.

      Finding Freedom is the stage where you start to extract yourself from the business so that it can run itself. This could mean that you bring staff in to do the work or you use a franchise model to expand your business. The key is that you are doing less and less of the work yourself.

      Depending on which level of business you are at, there are systems and tools that will be appropriate for you to use and some which are not.

      Figure 3: The core activities for the three business departments at the three different stages of business

      If you are in the Getting Going phase then you should be Experimenting. You need to be working with an open mind and be ready to play with the way that you work to find the way that works best for you. Don’t feel like you need all the answers, and it’s fine to have a few unexpected explosions along the way!

      Once you know ‘what’ and ‘how’ in the Going Steady phase then you are ready to start Systemising! This will make running the business more straightforward, requiring less mental effort from you and allowing others to start to help you as you reach the dizzy heights of Automation and Delegation, which will eventually lead to the Finding Freedom stage.

      Before you start choosing your systems and tools

      Before you get started using any systems for your business, it is helpful to have an idea of how you want it to look. One of the benefits of running your own business is that you are in charge and you make the rules. It’s easy to be constrained by our expectations of how a business runs but try not to be! Companies like Uber (a taxi company with no taxis) and AirBnB (a bed and breakfast company with no properties) are a great example of this. While I am not suggesting you need to develop a completely new business model, it is good to start as you mean to go on. If you only want to work four days a week then start there, and if you want to pick your children up from school every day then set your working hours to finish at 3 pm. Sure, there will be some people who won’t buy from you because of this but that’s ok. There’s usually more than enough business to go around and delivering superb services and products to people who are happy with your business model will make running your business so much more enjoyable.

      Things to think about:

      •What will your working hours be ? Will you work weekends ? Occasionally/never ?

      •How will people contact you ?

      •Will you have an email address for work ? Will you have a separate phone number to your personal number so you can ‘switch off’ out of hours ?

      •How will people contact you out of working hours or when you are busy with work ? Will a voicemail be enough (and if so do you have a message for your clients; this is easier if you have a work-only phone)? Would it be beneficial to use an answering service so that your clients speak to a real person ?

      •Do you want/need a physical location for your work or would like to be ‘location independent’? If you are working from home, are you happy to share that address with people (there are times where you need to give a physical address legally)? If you are not happy with sharing your home address you can rent an address from your accountants, or a local shared office will often offer this service.

      How will you do your work?

      The most straightforward scenario is a bricks and mortar business where you know you will need to be present at the site for the times you are open.

      If you are selling physical products online, will you be shipping them yourself or will you be using a shipping service? Amazon now offer this as a part of their seller packages so if you don’t want to be tied to having to post things out, this can free you up, but at a cost. If you are shipping things yourself, which delivery service will you use? There are

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