Preparing to Delegate Marketing: Remove Business Bottlenecks

Welcome to the Well-Built Business Podcast. I'm Chelsea Fourier, systems strategist and founder of the Well-Built Business Method. I'll be honest, operations isn't the flashiest part of entrepreneurship. It's not the thing people usually want to focus on, but it is what will keep you in your zone of genius and away from burnout.

But if you are a service provider, business owner, and you've hit a point where you realize structure, clarity, and clean systems are what actually unlock sustainable growth, you are in the right place. Each week we talk about what it takes to build a business that supports your life, not one that constantly drains it. I'm really glad you're here. Let's dive in.

So this episode is actually a deep dive into one of the six pillars that I teach in the Well-Built Business Method. And this pillar is marketing systems and visibility workflows. And so for the past couple episodes we've been exploring. Why is systematizing or even delegating marketing and visibility actions so challenging for service-based businesses and expert business owners?

We've also been starting to talk about like light at the end of the tunnel, what it can start to look like and feel like, and how you can open up your, your time and your ability to involve others in this type of work, these tasks for you and your business. As you begin to audit and work backwards from the ideal output that you want to be creating, putting out into the world for marketing and work backwards to create very simple workflows. If you miss that in the last episode, you can check it out after.

But this week is a case study, so we're going behind the curtain of a real project that I've been working on with permission, and it's a business that is probably very different from your own. And it's such a great example of how we all face the same types of challenges. If you are the founder, the creative visionary, the person who has taken. A tiny seed of an idea and turned it into a real life online, or in this case, in-person business.

It is based on your story, your knowledge, your expertise, your brain archiving, all of the things. Until you get to a place where you can't handle being the bottleneck anymore. And so we're specifically gonna be talking about an incredible outdoor charter school that my son actually goes to. It is STEM focused, it's outward bound vibes, high focus on academics.

It's like everything I didn't know that I wanted my son's kindergarten year to be, and now going forward for his elementary. I'm gonna talk about how I experienced without even knowing at all what was going on in the backend, how I experienced this bottleneck as an outsider. And then I'm gonna talk more closely about the bottleneck that the founder is slash was experiencing. 'cause we're seeing great transition very quickly.

Some of the very specific things that I've been helping her to put in place very quickly that are solving challenges and just open mental loops and bottlenecks that have been happening for years, even just in the past couple months. Let's first start about how I found and learned about this program. It's the same way that most people find and learn about you and your business. I remembered seeing that there was an outdoor school in the city that we live in and we were, or we were just moving to actually, and I was like, oh my gosh, we need to figure out where we're gonna send them to school.

Or if we're homeschooling, like open loop in my brain as the mom, her ideal, customer basically. And so as we started moving, I started like I had a tab open on my phone to the social media. I think it was her Instagram account, but I was confused, I'll be honest, because I remembered the name of the school from driving by and seeing the sign, the physical sign at their property. And when I pulled up that social media account, it said it was a preschool.

And I was like, I'm pretty sure I heard someone saying they send their third grader there, so I need to look into this. So then when I did have that tab open and then later went into it, it was a little bit of a maze. I'm gonna be honest. It was like there was a preschool site and an elementary school site, different names, but the sign at the school only was one of the names.

And then, so I went over to the preschool website because that was the name of what I'm picturing the school being right. I went to the website and then there was like, if I really scrolled down, there was a section to saying oh, here's our sister school, like the elementary school. Oh, great. That, that loops it together.

They're like sister programs. Okay, cool. So then I go to that new website and there's a chat bubble that said something like, explore booking a tour here. That's what I wanted.

So I do that and I never hear back. So then I went back to the site again. A couple days later I found their phone number, left a voicemail, got a call back, scheduled a tour, right? So it happened.

I was determined. I just had such a good ping in my gut that this was gonna be a good fit for our family. And so I was like, I'm gonna figure this out. So I got the tour.

I fell in love with the program, but let's just be honest. And if the founder's listening, she's girl, I know this is what we're trying to avoid. That confused first impression is not what any business or organization wants. Like forcing people to scrounge to figure out how to work with you is not the vibe and it is more common than you would think, even if you just run a simpler business that's not in person.

Like when's the last time you went to the social media link that you have on Instagram and made sure. That all of the links are still active because your little link tree or your links page on your website saying that you're hosting a workshop that actually happened six months ago is also not the vibe, right? That's what we're trying to avoid. So anyway, I am not throwing shade because this is, it's just really common and in the beginning of any business, whether you are a solopreneur, whether you have a small team, whether you're exclusively online or an in-person business that needs to market online, in the beginning, everything comes from your brain.

As the founder, you are the service provider. You're also setting up the website. You're the expert, you're the person doing research late at night. And then setting up a social media account.

I get it. And so especially as that expert, the visionary, when you get to a place where people are willing to help, whether it is paid staff, it could be, in her case, I know that she has some paid staff and then obviously the teachers, like there's physically a lot of people there who are now like stakeholders. They are being paid to be a part of this beautiful organization, this school that she's created. She also has family members, moms, parents being like, Hey, I'm willing to help.

I'll volunteer some of my time with this area of my expertise. So I wanna translate this for you real quick. If you have an assistant, whether it's virtual or in person, if you have a business manager, if you have a co-founder, if there's more than one of you now for any different number of roles. How do you start to remove yourself from being a bottleneck of having to make every decision, approve everything, send the file that needs to be ready, send a password to get into an account.

Like how do you start to remove yourself? So let's talk about some of the shifts that are happening. 'cause this is really where it's gonna shift from her story to let's dive into some of the strategy that's relevant regardless of what type of business you are running. First, just to step back for a second, if you listened to episode three, you're gonna recognize the framework that I've been working with or her.

So we audited what the school needed to be putting out into the world, and then we've been working backwards to figure out what assets and what systems and what workflows needed to exist. I went deeper into my three-step process for auditing. In the previous episode, you can check that out after if you have not already. But what we found applies directly to what so many of you are experiencing in your own business, right?

Here's the paradigm shift for this episode. The fact that slowing down to create systems and to think big picture about who needs access to what or what assets need to exist before you could hand something off, right? Slowing down to really think about how to fill gaps of confusion or lack of access is what allows others to actually own tasks and not just be willing to help. And I've been experiencing this as well, one my online business manager, her name is Sarah, she is lovely, and she has been like, tell me what else I can do.

I've got some extra time for you this month. Like, how can I help? But until I can slow down and be like, Ooh, I want you to own turning the podcast episodes into blogs, and let me teach you exactly how I want that done or what the vibe is, and that's actually gonna be what I talk about in the next episode next week. But until I slow down to do that, it's amazing that she's willing to help.

She has all the skills to be able to help me, but it is not her job to create the creative flow and think about the systems. So that she can then step in and do the thing, right? So if you have people who are willing to be implementers, like the volunteer crew of a handful of us moms that are supporting the school and have various complimentary skillsets around marketing and business, we're like, Hey, we're happy to help, but. Until a system is created by the founder, or in this case, I'm actually helping her, then it's really hard to involve other people.

So all the mental loops that you have open need to be fully closed, decided and communicated if anyone else is going to carry them. And so here's a really specific example of what I mean by that. Saying, we want to rebrand. We need to consolidate our social media.

I need a new website. Those are very big mental loops that have a lot of micro decisions embedded within them, right? And so we gathered together as a marketing committee in the first meeting. It was such a great example that we had amazing people in the room.

Tons of expertise and willingness. Great conversation. People being like, I can put in four hours a month. I could do this.

I could take over social media. Everyone taking their own separate notes of what felt relevant to them, and then here's the challenge. I cringed when it was happening 'cause I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to step in and help with this because I don't really see a solution for it. At the end of the meeting, everyone was like, great meeting guys, and nobody left with clear ownership.

Of what they were gonna be doing and any set of deadlines, a place to put their work, a way to communicate between meetings. We had a text thread that scheduled this meeting of very busy moms and a very busy business owner, and I was like, oh, but we, oh, but we need, what are we doing? Who's doing what? And so energy and willingness are not enough without structure and systems to hold them.

And so whether you have a team, one team member or volunteers or paid employees, it's the same thing. You have to be working through some of the same auditing that I talked about in the previous episode. And then you need to be thinking about some of the core questions, and let's dive into that right now. So the audit working backwards from the goals for this particular project, the school's goals were to in May or June to have this like deadline of consolidating two social media accounts.

So they did start initially as just a preschool. And this is very similar to many businesses that just evolve, right? Oh, this, we started this account, now we have this other one happens all the time. So they started as just a preschool and then started to expand into elementary school and created separate website and separate social media and separate names for both.

And then come to find out, that is super confusing, right? And so the goal is to have one. Instagram account, one, Facebook account, one website. All of them having clear navigation, full rebrand.

Along the process of redoing this website and social media. So new colors, new fonts, a new logo, a new icon, a new tagline. So everything kind of being like, Hey, when we started, this is what I could pull together and did it really well and to the best of my abilities, and now I really need like this refresh. Who hasn't been there?

So before just picking tools and deciding that I was gonna throw my hat in the ring to help organize all of this. 'cause I was not gonna be able to stand by and watch everybody just be like, yay, we're excited. I was like, oh, but who's doing what, right? But before, just like picking any tools, I need to sit down.

And we had a private one-on-one just conversation with the founder and I asked some really core questions. What software do you have in place? Or what are you willing to put in place? Like where are we gonna communicate and track tasks?

And not just for this marketing committee, but you also have staff. Could they be using the same method and process and software? So where are we gonna communicate And track tasks was a big one. The second was where do we store and share files?

If we need someone to help with social media, how are they gonna have access to pictures that were taken during the class day? From a teacher, like, how's that getting, over to her? And then where will we set standards and train on this new brand, right? Because if multiple people are creating something, this is a very common challenge.

I want everything to look consistent. Not only look consistent, but sound consistent. This is, even if you're a solopreneur, like you want. You don't wanna be like, oh, I'm using these colors this day and this template from Canva this day.

And this day I'm talking about helping dog trainers, and this day I am talking about helping dog owners, like just being really consistent, right? And so these three questions have driven every decision that followed. What we've been able to do working together is that we decided from a cost perspective and a simplicity perspective, that there did need to be a project management software in place for communication delegation, and tracking progress between meetings. We decided to use a software called Trello.

It is a very low barrier of entry, like learning wise. It's very cost effective. It's a really good way to have one board for her to do things with her paid staff and one board for us as a marketing committee. So it's very simple and we decided to do that and I helped her to start setting that up.

We realized that in order to remove her from the bottleneck of, Hey, can you send me the file? Or, Hey, can you send me this photo? We needed to put together a strategy for organizing in the cloud, and so we decided on Google Drive for organizing files and granting access based on need. And this is really important because she has one particular challenge around like confidentiality, but many businesses face this.

There are certain people on her staff that are able and let's say, approved or authorized to have access to student records, but someone coming into volunteer just to, do some research or write some copy or help with the website or the social media. Should not and cannot have access to student records. And so this is in very different context, but if you are bringing someone in and you're a nurse coach or you're a speaker who wants to make sure that the. Your IP is protected.

There's a number of reasons why. Thinking through naming functions and foldering systems and who gets access to what and who does not get access to what and what is locked, what is password protected, right? Google Drive and Dropbox can be very similarly set up. We decided since she already lives in Google for her business to do Google Drive.

Okay, so then we talked about a focused plan, like here's a short sprint of what we need to do. To create the rebrand assets. And she is a small school owner and had a small budget for this rebrand, and I'm like, we can figure this out, right? So we worked with a like a crowdsourcing online program where you can put in like your specs and your requests for a logo and get back a logo.

And we, I worked really closely with her to help shape what it was that she was really trying to articulate and communicate. We did end up getting a logo and I, and an icon that she really loves. And so that then starts to drive okay, in order to put out this requirement for the logos, we need to choose the color palette first. 'cause we don't want a logo coming back and then realize it doesn't fit into the color palette we choose.

So first we worked on color palette, then logo. Then from there other color palette, she's in particular, her business needs to have kind of a secondary color palette for the programs that she offers for them to be like visually differentiated. And then we were able to start working on like some of those icons for the programs and then the typography. And then we were like, okay.

Next thing I became worried about is there's multiple people who are taking their version of how to interpret the brand and putting it out into assets. Like one person's making a newsletter and one person's making social media. And so I realized we needed a presentation to train someone who is working in her brand and in her Canva account. On how to properly use the brand.

So how to use the colors to have the right contrast, how to use the fonts examples. And so I built that for them to have a training that anybody going through can now be like, oh, this is exactly, if I was to follow this training and then create a first draft of a carousel post, if I've followed these instructions, it should be pretty darn close and get approved. So those were some of the first things that I wanted to make sure we had in place. And then we were able to come back together as a committee and revisit as a team with these things in place.

And then to be like, great, let's start delegating. Are you gonna take that task on? Let's assign it to you in Trello. Let's make sure you have access to the folder in Google Drive that has the assets you need to do that task we've now delegated to you.

So we're able to now be in communication and there's still gonna be kinks and things like, oh, I need to have access to. Post on, your Facebook account, you need to let me into meta and all these things. But there's a much clearer path forward so that the volunteers and the people who are paid are able to be delegated something and be able to have what they need. And this is one of the biggest gaps.

So many business owners will hire someone and be like, it's just not working out. They are not working as quickly as I thought they would. They're not taking ownership of what I want them to do, oh said, with so much love it's often, but have you created the systems so that they can, so that they can, so that they can own it. So just to fast forward, we're like two months in to doing some of this work.

There's now working communication between Trello, Google Drive, a shared Canva account, new color pellet fonts logo, like everything that needs to be ready for this rebrand as a base clarity on how the social media volunteer can step in confidently. She has worked on a job description and SOPs and documentation. It's really lovely clarity on how the other volunteers are contributing their expertise in specialized ways, a clearer vision for what the considerations are for the website.

What kind of consolidation? We've been able to sit down and work inside of the Canva account and start looking at some templates and what looks good using the branding right? And so the founder is no longer the only person who can do these things. If she was not giving this clear direction and making some of the core decisions do you like this logo?

Yes or no, that really needed to be her. But now I can sit down with another volunteer. We can both have our Canva, log into the Canva account, have our laptops open at my kitchen table and get work done while the founder is off running the school. And that is truly the bottleneck starting to open up, right?

So what I want you to take away from this. If you have team members, if you have contractors or volunteers who want to help, but they can't because everything lives in your head or they feel like they need to run everything by you. This is your sign girlfriend. This is your sign that you can put your big girl panties on and by yourself or with help.

I'm happy to help create the systems. They don't have to be complicated. They just have to exist. They can be messy, they can be something that needs to be revisited, but just starting, you can ask yourself these three questions.

Where do we communicate? Where do we store things and where do we train? Start there. You'll be surprised how quickly others can step in and bring up great ideas and I'm just starting to see, okay, this has been a big weight on her shoulders of, oh my gosh, we need to start this rebrand.

For years she told me we've gotten more done in the last two months. Then she has in the past two years trying to even tease away what it would look like to start doing any of this by herself. Which felt like a herculean effort or involving others, which just felt very amorphous of great, you wanna help? How can you help?

I dunno. And so this is obviously one very specific example. I am gonna be diving in the next episode about how I am documenting a very specific two workflows in my business, one around short form video marketing, and one on how I am turning my podcast into a blog post, into a newsletter, and creating workflows. So I'm gonna talk about that pretty detailed.

I'm happy to like, share some of what's working, some of the software, some of the systems. With the goal that my business manager can actually own the blogging and the email newsletter as quickly as possible without it taking my voice away. I'm not asking her to write any of this. In fact, she would not like that.

And we're not relying heavily on ai. So how can you actually create systems that retain your voice in marketing and visibility tasks, but be ready to delegate fairly quickly even into a new project like this podcast? So just to recap, marketing and visibility is obviously one of the six pillars of the well-built business method. We're diving deeper into that.

The past couple episodes and we've got one more coming and this is really, it's the easiest place to become the bottleneck. It's literally marketing you and the thing you created, so it can be very hard to see the forest for the trees on how to remove yourself if any of this resonated. There are two ways to take a next step with my support to help get you out of this bottleneck era and more into. Delegation and ease and clear priorities.

Era. The first is booking me for a rooted VIP day. During our time together, we map out your next 90 days, both strategically and energetically. It teaches you my method of seasonal planning, incorporating your capacity and radically honest expectations of what you and your team can do.

The second way is to book me for a business systems audit. Find out which of the six pillars need your attention first to get your best. ROI, right? I want you to have an ROI of money and of buying back your time.

And so which of the six pillars of my method. We'll actually help you see that ROI soonest, and you walk away with very specific plans. If you wanna DIY, jumping into fixing those systems, you are welcome to. Or at the end of the audit, we also talk about what it would look like to bring me in to help you on the implementation.

So links to both of those ways of working with me, of course, are in the show notes. And if you wanna be on my own weekly newsletter make sure to jump into the well-Built Business Buzz. It goes out every Monday.