The Business ‘System’

Ten years ago when I first started this crazy world of ‘making money online’ I did things the hard way. I built my business from the ground up (that’s expected) but my mistake was not taking myself out of the picture as far as running the business went and that nearly killed me.

At the time my ideal business was myself working pretty much non-stop 18-20 hours a day with only a few hours of sleep here and there in order to keep the business operating smoothly. My business was 24/7 and I was expected to deliver my products and services instantly after a purchase.

Now my problem was I didn’t have automated systems in place to verify orders or contact my suppliers for delivery. I did everything manually. Thinking back on it now I could of easily hired some guy on oDesk to automate verifying orders and delivering of products and services.

Instead this is how I did things:

After every order customers would contact ‘Live Support‘ to setup delivery of their product or service. It would wake me in the middle of the night because of the loud notification I had setup. I can still hear the insanely loud *BING, “Live Chat Notification”. To this day detest Instant Messengers of all sorts such as Skype. It was a nightmare!

While the money I made was great, it could have been so much better if I took the time to build an automated system instead of doing all the work myself. I just didn’t understand at that time that in order to grow my business, I had to take myself out of the picture. If my business was limited by my input it would stagnate. Instead what I needed was a business system, something that wouldn’t get tired or need my constant input. Not only would this system work around the clock but my customers would appreciate a better system instead of having to wait for my input.

If your business requires your input in order to make money, then you don’t have a business, you have a job. It’s as simple as that.

It was only when I had constant non-stop orders which made it impossible to sleep that I finally hired help to support my business. In order to grow you need to let go and this was a lesson that took a long time for me to understand.

The ‘Business System’ is really a machine that runs your business instead of you doing the heavy lifting. This machine is there delivering you products instantly, answering customer questions, handling tasks, pushing people down the sales funnel, bringing in and retaining customers.

Today my job is to build machines that run my businesses. These machines enable me to make money while I sleep.

When a customer orders something from me they are given that product or service instantly without my input because of systems I put in place years ago. Everything is automated or handled by a dedicated person or group of people.

My job is not to run the business but instead focus on the business system that does the work, the machine in the background doing the heavy lifting. I make sure that machine is finely tuned and operating as normal, that’s my job.

When I see parts of that machine need upgrading, I do that. When I see an opportunity in that machine, I focus on that. I build out a new system for new projects. All my businesses have machines working in the background that have specific tasks and I’m the overseer of these machines.

How does that sound? Instead of doing all the work yourself, you have little busy bee automated systems handling tasks, delivering orders, handling customer issues, building new systems.

Now I’m not tied to my computer working 20-hours a day for my business. I’m working smarter setting up automated systems, outsourcing tasks to others and basically building out the business to let it run itself.

If you find yourself working long hours in your business, think to yourself what repetitive tasks do you do on a daily basis that can be automated. One specific tasks that took about an hour of my time each day was entering customer order numbers into my back-end system so they could utilize advanced features of their product. This was an easy task but it took time. So what I did was go to oDesk to seek out a programmer to automate this task. It costs $200 and a few days waiting for the final product but now orders are entered automatically and this saves me an hour each day. And the best part is my customers are happier because they don’t have to wait around for input to get their product. It’s win-win. 🙂

The system is a machine that runs your business without your input. Your job in business is to take yourself out of the picture as much as possible. Only when you do that will your business grow. Makes sense?

About Donald

I'm Donald, I have a passion for making money online and teaching others how to make money online. If you haven't read Six Figure Boss already, check it out. It's a complete step-by-step guide to to creating your own online business.