Not Putting In Systems Affects Your Bottom Line
I spoke recently about firing yourself from certain tasks in order to protect your business. By automating, delegating, or deleting tasks you can keep parts of your business running without you, in the event of an emergency, which is a good thing. What I didn’t talk about in that post is the financial cost of doing it all yourself and not implementing systems.
I hear it all the time, “Dawn, I don’t make enough right now to put in this system to…” and I get it. You don’t want to take on a new service, or team member, if you don’t think you can afford to keep them. But I want you to think about the real cost of doing it all yourself.
Not having systems in place is costing you real money.
You are doing tasks that can be done by someone else for less than your time value. This isn’t an arrogance thing, or some wild thought that some tasks are less important or valuable than others. A good Virtual Assistant is worth their weight in gold. This is about how you spend your time and how much you can recover in revenue if you are charging your actual rates.
Here’s a great example I heard on a podcast somewhere. I honestly can’t recall where or when, but I remember the story. A young business owner undertook a home improvement project to change out a sink, plumbing and all. This entrepreneur was so proud of himself; he had completed the work in about 9 hours or so. After 3 trips to the home improvement store for expert advice and hours inside the kitchen sink cabinet. And he bragged to his mentor about the amazing job he did over the weekend.
Him mentor asked how much a plumber would have charged to do the same work. The entrepreneur said, “$450.00!” the mentor then asked how much an hour the business owner made on average. The answer was, “$200.00 an hour.” So, this story teaches, for 9 hours of his time, worth $1800.00, the entrepreneur didn’t work on his business, serve any clients, or make any meaningful business connections. To save $450.00. By the way, the plumber would have finished in about 1/3 of the time. Ouch.
Where are your systems issues? Where are you resistant to automating, delegating, or deleting the tasks that are costing you (and your business) real dollars every month? Create a list this week of things that need to be systematized that are outside your zone of genius (and would be cheaper if an expert did them). Then, let’s look at the numbers. What is the REAL financial cost? Then do a quick Cost-benefit Analysis (see this blog)
to make the decision whether to implement the change.
Need help with the numbers or implementing the system you need so your business can grow and thrive? Ask me anything on our free 30-minute support call. Get on my calendarhere.