When you move your business along, and it starts to work, there are problems that crop up. One of the most common is referred to as the “feast or famine” cycle. It’s when you actually start to get clients and business, and money!
And… you get overwhelmed, because you can’t keep doing the things you were doing and keep up with the new business and clients coming in. The overwhelm leads to not doing everything- who could? – and then business, slowly, starts to drop off.
Feast. Famine.
In this short, 5 minute video, I address one critical thing you have to work on to end this cycle, namely systems, without losing the love in your business.
Did that resonate? What’s one system that you can start bringing love and attention to this week?
Program or Coaching?
Group programs cost less, usually, and can be incredibly supportive community environments. Individual or group coaching costs more, but you get very personalized guidance and support.
Which to choose?
Don’t leave the choice entirely up to whim, or just what you want. In certain stages of business development a program just makes a lot more sense for a ton of reasons. Once your business has made some progress, then coaching makes more sense.
But, where exactly are you? Most small business owners I’ve spoken to either grossly underestimate or overestimate how far along they are.
And it’s why I invite you to take our Readiness Assessment.
It’s free, and whether you’re in start up mode or are in more advanced stages of your business, it will help you get right to the heart of what you need.
We can help you learn where your business is developmentally and what you need to help it grow. Click here for a Readiness Assessment.
With love and appreciation,
Mark
24 Responses
You hit the mark (!) exactly for me with this one, Mark. I’m suddenly getting overwhelmed with dozens of little admin tasks that leave me grumpy and irritated. I like the challenge of your question, and am going to sit down and think about where I can bring in one new system (for starters). Then I can refocus on the things that I love to do. Thanks for the reminder, and hey, good to see you surrounded with green!
Juliet- so glad to hear that! And yes, totally worth it to take the time with it.
This was well worth the listen because you mentioned some things I really could make more efficient in my business. What emailer are you using that makes these templated (yet customizable) responses easy to save and call upon? I have tried cutting and pasting from word files but sometimes there is the ghastly problem of the font changing where the customization occurred…ugh!!!
Thanks again Mark–love your setting there, in heart-opening Nature!
Christina,
Most email providers will save your templates (or save your past emails so you can copy & paste). If you’re new, I’d recommend MailChimp, since it’s free for a list up to 2,000, and is very user friendly.
Hi Christina- Lisa is right about MailChimp, etc, and I was referring to something even simpler. I use a Mac, and in the Mail app I can create signatures- you know, the way to automatically add your name, website and a nice quote to emails you send out?
The trick is to create as many signatures as you need- and the signature IS the email text you want to use. So I start to write an email, select the signature I want, and then fill in the sentences and the name.
Easy-peasy. 🙂
I never knew about this. I thought the signature was only for a short bit of text, i.e. my address. Thanks Mark, I’ll see if I can get this to work. I’ve been saving my emails in Drafts that I want to reuse, but I still have to copy the text that way. PS I love these practical tips! Same with Steve’s below.
Christina – I pretty sure you use gmail, right? If so, I want to share a “Lab” that gmail has which works wonders for this very thing. If you go to your gmail settings, click on the blue link at the top right that says “Labs.” These are all “beta test” options gmail offers. The Lab you want to enable is called “Canned Responses.” Horrible name, amazing results. 🙂
With “Canned Responses,” you can create any templates you want, and then just insert them into your emails with just a few clicks. If you need help with this, I can walk you through it on our next call. 🙂
Also, I use a text expander on my Mac called aText. It saves me TONS of time. SUPER effective – and, you can cut/paste stuff without any formatting. Brilliant!
Lastly, on a Mac, you can use —SHIFT + Option + Command + V— to paste anything on your clipboard without formatting.
Very cool! I don’t have a mac, but you’re right about the gmail. I’ve added the lab feature…still puzzling over where to set up the templates for the “canned messages.”
Thanks!!!
Aha! Just found it, under the “more” arrow next to the trash can within the message-creation box. (In case anyone else reading this is also gmail user…)
Right on, Christina! Once you get the hang of it, it’ll be SO helpful to use.
Thank you Mark!! I have a now set aside a day to review this in more depth. I have a budding vision of ease and freed up energy for my clients. Can’t wait!
Laurel- you are so welcome! Woo-hoo!
I’m currently setting up a finance system so it can be more automated. I hate having to track receipts and manage money too much. There’s a sweet spot where a bit of maintenance every week lets me know what I have and what’s coming up without getting too micro-manage-y or not having enough of an understanding of where my money is going. I have a system set up for my personal finances this way that I’m making some adjustments to for my business. It’s a lot of work, but I know all of this set-up on the front end will pay off when it runs more seamlessly in the future.
Verhanika- Exactly! So glad you’re putting the time in now. Financial systems are SO important to a healthy business, and a healthy life. The less work the better- having a decent system that you can be consistent with is better than the perfect system that is too troublesome to keep up with.
Whoa! Timely. Glad you took time to talk about this stage (and nicely done BTW, glad you gave us a vicarious experience of your new environment). Yes, if proper systems are not in place, it is hard to move to that next step of taking on more people (a place I have been in for some time). Do you talk more about systems in the Foundations 2 class or is that more of a group or individual coaching matter? Thanks!
Hi Tabitha- glad it’s so timely! Foundations2: Expand Your Reach helps people move from Stage 1 Creation into Stage 2 Concentration of business development by getting your messaging, marketing and outreach in order. After Foundations2, we recommend coaching, small group or individual, to help you move into Stage 3, Momentum.
Have you taken a Readiness Assessment with us, to help determine where you are and what you need?
One of the systems I’d like to put in place is being able to import transactions from the bank and credit card without having to enter each individually. Do you have an accounting program you’d recommend? We were using QuickBooks Pro but it is too cumbersome and since it is time to upgrade, it is time to make a change.
I’ve been looking at QuickBooks online and Fresh books.
Thanks!
Sally, my bank does this for me. I can import the whole financial year all at once. (I’m with a bank in New Zealand). But better still, I’m changing over to Xero for my accounting system this month, and Xero will do this automatically. From what I’ve seen, it’s an amazing system that will make everything easy.
I’m feeling this post. There’s already a sense of having to balance my personal and business needs and I’m not even that busy – yet! So yes liking systems, systems, systems, automated responses and in time a VA to work a few hours a week for/with me.
As always, right on the money, Mark. 🙂 And loved both yours and Steve’s suggestions for creating templated emails. Marvellous!
Very much identify with the “feast-famine cycle” and the pattern you describe. I’ve put quite a few systems in place these past 6 months but feel more are needed. Really like your example–that’s something that would be great for me to emulate–thank you!
Here’s one I implemented this week:
I keep very systematized, handwritten to-do lists (and rewrite them whenever I start to feel overwhelmed). One section on my daily/weekly is all about what clients I need to send reminders to, have an email check-in with, have a phone session with, etc. My handwritten list is very much alive and well…but this week I created a computer document with charts:
1. a grand chart showing current clients, the package they have (and whether they are in-person or long-distance), any herbal dispensary credit, regularly scheduled sessions, regularly scheduled email check-ins, log-in info for their online food/movement/other logs.
2. weekly charts showing those same clients along with places for marking off completed check-ins, marking off completed sessions, package status (e.g., 3/15 sessions; or completes next week), new herb purchases/notes, marking off whether I’ve saved and printed the week’s correspondence to add to their clinic file.
Just having this in place feels so, so much better.
Fantastic, Dana! That’s wonderful- way to step it forward! And I’m not surprised at what you’re experiencing- your business has made some great leaps and bounds forward, and you definitely need support!
Ping-Pong is fun, but not when using email as the playing table. The process of finding agreement to meet, and then the day, and then the time, and finally a location or virtual method often turns into a volley of emails over several days. Exhausting.
Online calendar systems allow clients to self-schedule with helpful reminder emails queued up automatically to help everyone arrive at the meeting on time and with little effort. Two systems that I have experience with are ScheduleOnce- http://www.scheduleonce.com/ and YouCanBookMe- https://youcanbook.me/. Both integrate nicely with Google Calendar. YouCanBookMe even has the capability of collecting a $ payment before an appointment can be scheduled.
If you need to schedule more than just a few appointments per week with folk, online calendar systems are worth the time and effort and $ to implement.
Joanne- I so agree- my online calendar has saved me a ton of time scheduling with clients and others.
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