What Are Business Systems? Service Business Edition

Welcome to episode one of the Well-Built Business podcast for women. We are here to talk about sustainable growth, and I am your host, Chelsea Fourier. This is a weekly business podcast for established women entrepreneurs and service provider experts to talk about growth strategy and operations with a focus on sustainability. Because as a service provider, it's not always just about chasing big metrics and leaps in income, but truly about anchoring in your next level of success.

So if your marketing is working and leads are coming in and you love being in your zone of genius working with clients, and you're starting to think more about the behind the scenes, the backend, the systems, maybe even hiring or training a team, then this is the conversation we're gonna be having. And don't worry. We're gonna break it into small bite-sized pieces so you can really percolate on what you already have in place, because I'm sure you do, and some of the things that are gonna feel newer to you and introduce new ideas that you can really put and implement into your business to anchor in that focus on your growth being sustainable.

So in this first episode, we are gonna tackle the conversation about what are business systems, what I believe they are, because there might be nuance. Meanings to that term or to that phrase that maybe you come with a certain idea of what systems are important, so what are business systems and why your service business needs all six. I have categorized over the years of working with hundreds of small business owners of service provider businesses, really six categories, maybe I call them six pillars.

I'm not quite sure of the categories of systems that need to be in place. They don't all have to be in place at once. It may depend on the current phase of growth and focus that you're in your business, but we're gonna just talk through all of them, and my focus on this podcast is going to be weaving in real, raw, honest transparency. Whether it can be sharing about my own personal journey, things that I have seen in the backend of client businesses, of course, I will only ever share with permission or anonymously to help really normalize some of these things that pop up as very real challenges, and that can create a bottleneck where you as the founder, as the business owner, are accidentally becoming a bottleneck in the growth of your own business.

It's a situation of not knowing what you don't know and then not really even knowing. Do you need to hire someone? Do you need a course? Do you need a template?

A lot of my clients are at a place where they're ready to throw a little bit of money at the problem of feeling like everything has to pass through them, or they have to wear every hat, every role in their business. But what problem do you throw it at and how much money is realistic and what does that look like? These are all conversations we're gonna be having very honestly and openly on this podcast. So make sure to follow if you're not already subscribed.

So let's talk about this problem that most service businesses reach. At some point, you're good at what you do. I'm gonna give some very specific examples. You could be a therapist, you could be a therapist who has branched out into doing coaching or breath work.

You could be a certified and trained healer or coach, or speaker, author. What I'm really getting at is that you are excellent at what you do. You have grown expertise, reputation based on what you've studied, what you've lived, what you've done right? Many service provider businesses are built around someone just being really good at what you do.

And then as the clients are coming in, you start to realize that there's all these other things that are not your actual expertise. The admin, the communication behind the scenes, setting up automations, your calendar, right? There's all these different things that in order for it to be simple for you to run the business. For it to be a good client experience of someone coming in, whether it be for a one-on-one session, a package of services, or even a course that you've created that brings your expertise into a different method of someone consuming your expertise, right?

All of these things. Start to become these areas where maybe you don't feel quite as strong, you need to know enough to either decide, am I gonna do this myself and improve my skillset around graphic design, around bookkeeping, around whatever it is? Or am I gonna learn enough to know what I need to hire out and then wanting to be able to oversee that person? Am I going to be learning it enough to create a system of how I would want it done?

And then find the person who can do it, right? So there's lots of options, but at some point you get to that place where you're experiencing the bottleneck effect In business, when everything runs through you, growth is feeling like it's hitting a ceiling, and that ceiling is your personal capacity, right? Because as a service provider or as an expert, or as a speaker or as an author like these are all. Businesses that are based around an individual, not individual, is you.

So unlike product businesses, nobody else can deliver your service. No one else can deliver your keynote presentation. No one else can support a client in a therapy session the way that you do, or a strategy session or tackle a design problem, right? That's not the problem.

It's the whole point is that you're really good at all of that. If you were just selling water bottles or, I don't know, highlighters, notepads, you could outsource way more, way faster and really scale. As an expert based business, the problem is that all of a sudden, in order to buy your time back to be more in your zone of genius and or just resting, because for many expert businesses, putting out a ton of energy to support clients is a lot. You have to account for the downtime that you need or the creative recharge time that you need.

And so then you're like, okay, so I'm gonna need to step into some kind of project manager, whether it's hiring a freelancer or bringing on a tech VA, or an O, OBM, or a strategist. Like how do I manage my inbox, chase the invoices, show up for a session, and then onboard someone to do a thing that I'm not even confident I'm doing well, so I'm just like, maybe you're not in the situation now and you have more confidence, but I really want to just transparently normalize that this is very common.

So if you are feeling like you cannot grow faster, you cannot take on more sessions because. For every session, there's certain manual steps you have to take, or there's certain things that you have not learned how to delegate, or there's certain things that you know could be automated, but you're still doing it manually, and so there is a very real cap on how much can pass through your business based on your capacity. Who am I and why should you care? Anything about what I have to say?

My full name is Chelsea Fourier. I'm originally from Maine. When I was in Maine, I was a small business attorney. I worked with hundreds of small and growth phase businesses around all kinds of really cool things, setting up LLCs and drafting custom contracts, and.

Negotiating licensing deals and merger and acquisition. So I was really in the fun side of law. I did a lot of trademark, copyright, intellectual property. So I was the lawyer that when people came to me, it was for exciting things like investing in starting up a business, not, going through a divorce or challenging things from the beginning.

So I had that big chunk of experience of working with businesses and really seeing. What did it take for a business to still be successful and running the next year? Because if you've ever run a business and you have an LLC or a corporation, if you're in the United States, that's what we call it, then every year you need to file a report with your state and saying, Hey, I'm still here. I'm still doing business.

And what I found and tended to really break my heart is I might work really closely with a client to set up their business. Let's say June, right? And so next April, when I would be reaching out all of that promise, that excitement, the contracts we drafted, like that would still all be very fresh in my memory. And if I got an email from them saying, Hey, don't renew the LLC, it never took it out, never took off the ground.

I never got the traction I needed, so I'm just winding it down. Whether that was in the first year or the eighth year, it just, it broke my heart because sometimes I could see the patterns of why things weren't taking off or why the traction was not getting there. And for many founders, the reason was they could not find a way to take their zone of genius and have that be their focus while other things were handled either by systems or automations or by people. And now, fast forward, I started practicing law in 2008.

So a lot more, since I stepped away in 2016, a lot more in the business world can be automated, delegated, outsourced at even way lower costs than we, we were experiencing before the advent of, a boom of virtual assistant roles and ai, different software that have automations set up right. So I had that chunk of experience, and then as I wound down my legal practice, I had a lot of life changes that happened and it just made sense to shift more into a strategy and a coaching role instead of maintaining my law license.

And so I haven't practiced law. I don't provide legal services. I haven't since 2016, and so since then, I'm recording this in 2026. So for the past decade, I have been exclusively focused on more of a coaching, consulting, or strategy role.

In those 10 years, I have had waves of time where I have been focusing more on, speaking or presenting or running courses, running masterminds. I've run a membership, I even ran a marketing agency. So I've had my hands in lots of different iterations of how my expertise was bringing out to the world, and in each of those phases was helping other experts, other service-based businesses bring their expertise out in the world. In a way that could be packaged to generate an income, to generate a profit.

And previous to that, I had even been involved with two startups in the state of Maine, two brick and mortar businesses that are still up and running and thriving. So I love being a part of creating something and being a part of creating the systems so that something can be around 10 years from now. And so sometimes there's just reasons that are unforeseen why a business might need to close down or can't get that traction. But if it is something that I can see the big picture of what's going on and I'm like, man, if we could create some systems for X, Y, and Z, if we could buy back the founder's time so she could be doing what she is best at, which is probably either providing services and or maybe being that like really magnetic face of the brand and being more invisibility.

How can we look at really removing the things that don't need to be on her plate? And how can we do that through automation or software? How can we delegate someone to do it? How can we create systems so that things are being done consistently?

Or even if it's something that does need to stay on her plate, but she doesn't love it, how can we create documentation or just making it simpler? So every time she touch picks up and touches that task, it can be faster, easier, done, and moving on to the next thing. So these types of things are what I call business systems. Anything that is going to help the founder, the business owner, the visionary, the service provider.

To be able to walk through the other tasks that have to be done to run a business, but to get back to zone of genius as quickly as possible, if that makes sense. And to not have as many energy leaks or open loops of things that, oh gosh, I know I've gotta work on this, but I need to maybe buy a course or may I need to maybe buy a template and figure X, y, and Z out. And so I wanted to just give a quick rundown in this episode about some of the I guess how I boil down business systems.

So this is the Well-Built Business podcast, and it's named as such because over the years I have created this framework, if you will, the well-built Business Method. It's looking at six core systems that when in place create sustainable infrastructure. For expert led businesses. So what we're gonna do over the course of, future episodes is look at each of these, let's call them pillars of systems, and we're gonna look at them from a story perspective, like understanding in normal language how the system works in my business or in a client's business.

We're gonna talk about case studies, so I will, with permission of past and recent clients, really dive into how working on one of these pillars made a drastic difference in their business and the sustainability for them to anchor in new levels of success. And at all dives. I'll be happy to be answering questions, so if you don't follow me yet, I am well-built business on. TikTok and Instagram and all the places, and I'm happy to take questions by DM and turn it into an episode.

So real briefly, what I wanna do is walk through these six pillars of systems, and as I do, if you're able to close your eyes or just slow down and really listen to them, I want you to tune in if one or more of them kind of pings for you. And it doesn't have to be an exciting, positive ping, although it could be. I don't want it to come from a place of like shame or guilt, but it might, what I want you to tune into is there an emotion or a pull that comes up for you as I describe these six pillars where you're like, oh man, that makes so much sense.

If I had that in my business, yeah, I'd be able to buy back time. I'd be able to buy back focus, so I'm gonna do a quick overview, and of course in future episodes we'll be diving way deeper. So the first pillar of systems is any system that is supporting you as the business owner around foundation and strategic direction. This is creating systems and even rhythms around how you gain clarity, how you tap into creativity, how you plan your business, how you plan.

I encourage doing it in 90 day seasons. How you decide what your priorities are, how you decide what you're saying no to, how you decide how you're gonna protect your capacity even while you're growing. And this is really one, a lot of people don't really think about this as being a skillset. You can absolutely develop skills around all of that.

The second is workflow and delivery systems. So how does work move from an idea in your brain to completion without everything depending on you? And this is going to require different systems depending on where you're at in your business, whether you do have team members, maybe assistants, or online business manager, or whether you're a solopreneur. But planning for how you'll be able to move from that like creative download, ping excitement to, oh gosh, that is out in the world, right?

How are you doing that? That could be talking about like project management. It could be talking about how you organize your tasks, how you ideate, how you track things down to how you organize your Google drive, because things get lost and then you can't find them, right? So a lot of things around moving from that creative impulse to completion.

Can really start to pull back for business owners awareness that they are not organized in an area that could actually make a drastic difference, and they might not even know about those solutions or systems. The next one is about team and internal operations. So this becomes especially important as you do have team members really understanding who owns what task, how is communication flowing, how are expectations communicated, what keeps daily operations running smoothly. Whether you are a team of yourself and a part-time assistant, or whether you have a team of five or even more when everybody sits down to open up their laptop and clock in for your business, do people know what they should be doing, what the priorities are and how to get feedback, ask questions.

That's gonna be become super important. That does start to really bring up more around like software and how you are tracking projects and tasks. That can start to feel a little bit like techy to some people and pull up some resistance. But of course I like to keep things as simple as possible.

So we're definitely gonna dive into options. The fourth system is around client experience and service delivery. How do clients move through your world from maybe being referred to you or finding you on Google or Instagram to then inquiring or booking a session? What is that whole journey?

To them, then receiving reminder emails or testimonial requests, mapping out that journey and looking at are there places that are currently manual and require you to remember something or keep a mental load that could be automated? Systemed delegated. And are there ways to really even uplevel the actual client experience so that you have greater retention? Are there opportunities where you could be communicating more clearly, setting better boundaries, making things more inviting?

And so really auditing that can be so helpful to actually keep people in your world longer. The fifth system is marketing and visibility infrastructure. And this is like what is driving new business, whether you have real systems supporting it or not. So this is, it's what most business owners get so excited about.

I wanna sign up for a TikTok course to learn how to go viral on TikTok. Hey, love that. Once that's working for you, is there a way we could systematize that? Is there a way we could create templates?

Is there a way we could. Track the behaviors that you're taking. Is there a way we could track the results that you're getting? Or if you are doing creating marketing materials, it could be email marketing, social media, creating templates.

We're really here looking, especially if you do have a team at making sure that you're not the bottleneck information is created. Assets are created. Systems, rhythms, templates are in one place and people that need access to it have access to it, even if it's just yourself. What are some things that you could be doing to streamline the process to simplify knowing what you're gonna be doing on a given day on a given platform?

I am, I have in the past owned a marketing agency and done a lot more around marketing coaching, but in this era, what I'm here to say is if it's working for you or you're working with someone who's helping you on the marketing, let's just make it easier, faster, better. So that you can clock in, do your marketing, create your visibility, and move on. Okay. And the last system is systems technology and documentation.

So this is looking at the tools that you're actually working with your software stack. You're looking at documentation like SOPs. Are you writing down how you do something so that someone else could do it? Are you creating job descriptions that are super clear so that your assistant who is on board knows exactly what tasks she's expected to own versus what you want to oversee, right?

So creating. These, I guess it's a pillar of a system that includes the word system because it's looking at what systems do you have in place and what systems for specifically technology and documentation could be in place. This day and age. We're not gonna ignore that.

This specific pillar is also going to include how are you using ai? How are you using automation like Make or Zapier? How are you using anything that's gonna simplify within the software stack that you have? Oftentimes when I work with clients, we start to realize that they are paying for software that does amazing features and things that they didn't even know that it did.

Especially because software improves and tries to one up each other within niches of software. And so auditing that and seeing, oh my gosh, maybe I could consolidate. X, Y, or Z software because the other one now has that same feature I was paying for separately. So these are the types of systems we're gonna be talking about.

Not every episode is gonna be a cut and dry, overview, but I want to. Really just invite you to see if any of those pinged for you, pinged or zinged. Pinged could be, that feels exciting. Zinged could be, Ooh, that's the pain point that I have right now.

And here's the thing. When you look at systems, you don't have to tackle everything at once. I do offer a business systems audit where we look at each of the six systems. There's a really, I don't wanna say rigorous.

Because it's not, it shouldn't put you off, but the onboarding into a business systems audit involves you because only you know what's working, what's not working. And so there's pre-work and then a call, and then I go about my thing and I start to audit what systems are working and specifically hone in. On the top two, that will be the best return on investment of either your time or money so that you can be like, okay, these are the first two that we're gonna work on, and let's tackle some of these steps, and what can be automated, delegated, right?

And so it just makes it very doable to actually start to see a return on investment from investing into systems because there's nothing more frustrating. Then saying, okay, I'm gonna tackle my systems. What do I start with first? Or hiring someone who has a really great pitch of how improving some certain system is going to work, or they're gonna migrate you to a new software.

But if you're not really actively engaged. In identifying how that problem is going to be solved by this improvement. A lot of times people end up wasting money or walking away with a system that they don't even know how to use or love. It doesn't work with their brain.

One of the things that I bring to this conversation. Is that I'm also a psychic. I'm intuitive, and I bring that into my work by really helping founders and business owners to identify what works for you, what feels clear to you, where do you wanna be in this business? And really bringing more of that energetic component in.

Because many business owners are, let's just be honest, highly creative, highly intuitive, neurodivergent like you're not working for someone else for a reason, and it's probably because you have some element of you that is just outside of the box and that's why you're doing what you're doing. And so being able to work with highly creative business owners like yourself and to normalize and just Hey, let's just use normal lingo about what you need and what the problem is, and make sure that this is gonna be not only a strategic, but an energetic match.

So that we're not basically creating a junk drawer of SOPs that you're never gonna touch again, right? I don't want you to pay someone to create something that you're actually not gonna use on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to benefit you and your business. So you know really what's coming on in the future of this show. We're gonna be going deeper into each of these pillars with those stories, case studies, super practical examples.

Some episodes will feel like you're being taught a little bit. Some will walk you more through the transformations that you could expect when you're working on a certain system. It's gonna be rich, it's gonna be quick, it's gonna be something you can consume and walk away with inspiration, motivation, maybe even some accountability if you're doing some of the systems improvement yourself. So I invite you, if you're not already subscribed, to join my newsletter.

If this resonated, the weekly well-built business Buzz is my weekly newsletter where I'll go deeper on some of these topics each week and also drop the most recent episode into your inbox. And so it's the best way to stay connected between episodes and get actionable tips on building sustainable operations. Also, since this is the very first episode, a, I hope that you'll subscribe and tune into future episodes, whether you go one by one or whether you skim through and find a title for a type of system that you know that you need to work on.

I look forward to supporting you in that way. And two, send this to a biz bestie. Sending this podcast over to someone who you know is in a similar type of business as you and might be facing these same challenges, not only helps them, but also helps me to expand my reach beyond my current network of who's listening to the podcast. So I'm excited to have you here.

I'm excited to dive into more topics, and please feel free to reach out on social media. So let me know what takeaways you've had from this conversation and any future topics you would like me to address on the Well-Built Business Podcast.