Why systematizing your business feels hard (nobody says this!)

Jul 6

Every other newsletter in your inbox sounds like… “Automate this,” “build a workflow for that,” or “here’s how to systemize your business so you can work three hours a week and make a million dollars.”

It sounds great: build systems, work less, maybe even make more money doing it.

But when you dig into the recommendation they’re actually making, it also sounds like seventeen more things to add to your to-do list, which as a business owner is already infinitely long. It’s not a far jump to you feeling behind before you've even started.

And I'll admit it: as an operations and systems consultant who makes content about this stuff, I'm part of the problem.

But I’ll tell you why I keep talking about it. Because I've watched the relief in a business owner when a system starts working. When they realize that they can make it to a workout class in the middle of the day, or have a little creative time because drafting a video takes half as much time or their weekly finance routine is now happening automatically.

It’s easy to talk about systems in business but today, I want to talk about why it feels hard to actually build them and what might be getting in the way of you feeling that relief. If you've bought software expecting it to fix your operations but nothing changed, this one’s for you.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video!‍ ‍

What does it actually mean to systematize your business?

Let’s be honest, "system" definitely qualifies as a buzzword these days. It also often gets used interchangeably with “process”, “tool”, and “resource”, but those aren't the same thing. Not being clear on what a system actually is and how it’s different from all these other things that can help your business is actually part of what’s making so many business owners feel like failures in building systems. So let’s talk about it…

A process is a repeatable set of steps it takes to complete a job.

Think like a recipe for cookies: sift the flour, measure the liquid ingredients, mix, put it on a baking sheet, bake.

A process walks you through the steps it takes to go from point A to point B. Processses remove decision making and creates consistency.

Where most business go wrong is trying to build processes (often called SOP’s) for too big a process with too much variation. Think about it like making a cookie recipe - you can swap walnuts for chocolate chips without it being to big of an issue but if sometimes you want the cookie base itself to be snickerdoodle and there are three potential mix ins, they’re fundamentally different recipes and should be treated as such.

There's some room for minor variation within a process but, once enough steps change, it's should be treated as its own process entirely to keep things predictable and consistent.

A tool is a resource you use to execute individual steps, or several steps, of a process.

To continue our baking analogy, a cake pan can make a chocolate cake or a carrot cake. A whisk can mix batter for a cake, beat eggs for an omelette, or emulsify a vinaigrette. The tool isn't specific to the task. It's flexible, and it gets deployed in a lot of different contexts.

In a business context, a tool can be a spreadsheet, a software, a microphone, a set of scissors, and so on and so forth.

This is where I see the most common mix-up for business owners, especially with software. Asana, a task management software, is a tool. It can be used for a long list of different tasks and processes, the same way that whisk can. So having Asana set up doesn't mean you have a process, and it definitely doesn't mean you have a system. It means you have access to a tool.

Which brings us to the elusive system…

A system is the whole framework for how a job gets done, which includes the process and the tools used to run it, plus the bigger context: who does it, when it happens, and where things get saved at each stage.

The context is key - a recipe is useful but it doesn’t actually do anything to make sure the cake gets made. A system establishes who is going to complete the process, where the resources/tools are that are needed to do so and when is the right (or wrong) time to run a process.

A professional bakery has a system for making chocolate cakes for clients. It's not just a recipe, and it's not just a whisk or a pan. They know who's baking on a Tuesday versus a Saturday, where the whisk and the pan live, and yes, they know the recipe too.

Systems help you get more done because they eliminate two of the biggest things that slow business owners down: decision making and communication failure.

When a system is in place, you don't have to decide on the process, who owns it, or where the file goes, because that's already decided. You go straight to execution. A well-built system also standardizes (and often automates) steps of the process, so there's less risk of a client not realizing a delay on their end means a delay in deliverables, or cash not coming in because an invoice wasn't paid on time.

A tool isn't a system (and neither is a checklist) ‍

I got on a call with a long time client of mine who wanted to be posting more consistently on her Instagram. The problem was that she’d open up the camera and not know what she wanted to talk about and as a result, content wasn’t getting out.

I asked her if she had a system for creating content and her reply? “Yeah, I have a page in my Notion.”

This immediately sends up flags for me because a tool, whether Notion or Buffer or Metricool or anything else, isn’t a system. Notion specifically, while one of my favorite tools in my business, is so flexible that it’s not typically clear enough to actually help any system happen consistently.

Through further conversation, it was clear that she had been expecting a tool like Notion to support her without ever investing in the sytsem. We spent the time identifying how she likes to create, her common bottlenecks and what would help her actually get the content out the door and I built the system for her inside of Notion, since she was already familiar.

Within 2 weeks, she reported that she was consistently able to get twice as much content out the door in half as much time because she was consistently collecting ideas for content in a place where they would all be waiting for her and as a result, she wasn’t wasting a bunch of time brainstorming when it came time to film.

In my own business, I used to run my bookkeeping myself and manually. Every Friday, I had to remember to log my expenses. I’d review my credit card charges and log them into a spreadsheet. And on a normal week, that worked fine. But if I was busy or on vacation, things were falling through the cracks.

At some point, I realized there was a better system available to me. I sat down and identified the steps that I’d manually go through weekly so I was clear on the process. But then rather than the “who” being me all the time, I set up automations using Zapier and my email so that the transactions were automatically populated on specific rhythyms. The “who” became part technology and part me, but when when I needed to be involved it was 10 minutes to check that everything looked correct rather than doing all the populating myself.

What used to be 90 minutes weekly is now 10 because the steps, the who and the when were all clearly outlined and, where possible, automated.

A similar shift occured in my personal life with meal planning. Each week on a random day when the fridge started to look empty, I’d check my schedule, brainstorm recipes, manually pulling ingredients from each one and build a grocery list by hand.

Then I built a meal planning system as a skill in Claude that asks me what I want to cook for the week, finds my saved recipes, aggregates the ingredients, and delivers a shopping list I can just use. When I want to customize, I still can, but the default is a system that takes no time at all.

Why building systems feels so hard for business owners

If you're a floral designer, you probably want to spend your time on the bouquets, not running payroll or drafting Instagram captions. The business part of your work clearly gets done because you built a profitable business, even if it was on blood, sweat, and figuring it out as you went. You deserve credit and a good amount of kudos for that!

But it's also fair to acknowledge that if you want more clients, want to charge more, or want time back, your systems might be nonexistent or they might seriously need to evolve.

So here’s the deeper truth as to why building systems feels hard to many business owners: it's a specific skill set.

It doesn’t make you a failure or mean anything about the future potential of your business. If setting these things up doesn’t come naturally to you, it might just be that you’re weaker in this skill set.

For example, I can't sing to save my life. That doesn't make me a failure at all. It also does mean that I’ve made the choice not to pursue being an opera singer. Similarly, I'm not good at writing code. Thankfully, tools now exist that let me get to a rough, workable version without understanding the language underneath it, but I have to recognize that because I'm not fluent in how those languages work, there's a ceiling on how complex what I build can get, and I'll be much worse at spotting problems or building something that holds up as the business grows.

The same is true for systems. You can't write a process for something you don't understand well enough to know what makes it break. If you don't understand what causes a bottleneck, or how a marketing platform works, it's genuinely hard to refine a process around it.

If building systems hasn't worked for you before, that doesn't mean your business has to stay this way, or that you're incapable of building them. There's another option, and it starts with being honest about which one fits where you are.

The three real options you have

Once you accept that systems aren't just tools, and that building them is a genuine skill, you're left with three actual options:

Option one: accept that you'll keep doing things manually.

You'll hustle, deal with some disorganization, and accept the limits that puts on your business and your personal life. I hope this isn't the one you pick.

Option two: learn the skill yourself.

Let’e be clear, this is the DIY route which means it will be some real work on your part. If you’re committed to this path, think about it this way: you need to learn about systems broadly (what makes a system effective, how do you design a system to handle common issues, what’s the best way to set them up), you need to observe the specific process you’re trying to build into a system (what are the steps, where do they run, what information do they need, what’s the timing) and you need to learn broadly about the sets of tools generally available for this system (you don’t have to be an expert in all the softwares but understanding the differences and capabilities will help you pick the one that’s right for you).

Like any DIY, you are absolutely capable of figurng it out, but you have to accept the time it pulls away from the actual business, and the fact that the output will have some compromises while you're learning.

Option three: bring in a systems expert to build it with you.

This is what we do at Exhale. We're brought in by service-based business owners who want to spend their time doing the work they're good at, and who'd like some of their life back too. Because we've built systems across a lot of different businesses, we already know which tools tend to fit which context and where things typically break, so it takes less time to get to a higher-quality result. And the business owner doesn't have to be hands on keyboard figuring it out themselves. This isn't specific to Exhale. Any systems expert you bring in should be able to offer you some version of this.

Your time is valuable, but so is your money, and I understand the hesitation to invest in a consultant for something that can feel basic enough to DIY.

A few honest ways to tell if it's worth it for you right now:

You've recently had to turn away business because of your own capacity. That's revenue you could have made, sitting on the other side of systems you haven't built yet.
You're approaching a breaking point, whether that's burnout, a maternity leave, or a launch you're genuinely worried you can't execute with the time you have. In situations like this, there's a real cost on the horizon, whether that's your reputation, lost revenue, or your health, and investing up front is what mediates it.
You've already tried to DIY this more than once. At some point, recognizing that your time is the most valuable resource you have, in your business and in your life, makes bringing in a specialist the smarter investment. Somebody else is executing while you get your time back for what actually matters.

Whether that specialist is us or someone else, I hope you get the support your business needs. If you're curious what that could look like with Exhale, book a call and we'll figure out the right next step together.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between a system and a process?

A process is the repeatable set of steps it takes to complete a job, like a recipe. A system is the larger framework around that process, including the tools used to run it and the context of who does it, when, and where things get saved. You can have a process without a system, but a real system always includes at least one process inside it.

Is buying new software the same as building a system?

No. Software is a tool, and a tool is just a resource you can use to execute steps of a process. Having a piece of software set up doesn't mean you have a process built around it, and it definitely doesn't mean you have a system. A lot of business owners buy a tool expecting it to solve an operational problem, then feel like the tool "didn't work" when really there was never a system built around it in the first place.

How do I know if I need to hire a systems expert instead of doing it myself?

A few signals it's worth the investment: you've had to turn away business because of capacity limits, you're heading toward a breaking point like burnout or a big launch you're worried about, or you've already tried to DIY your systems more than once without it sticking. If any of those are true, the cost of waiting is usually higher than the cost of getting help.

Why do systems keep breaking even after I build them?

Usually because what got built was a tool or a checklist, not a full system. If the process changes, or a new team member comes on, or the tool gets swapped out, a system that only has one of those pieces in place is going to fall apart. A system that accounts for who owns the work, when it happens, and where things are stored is much more durable to those changes.

Do I need to be technical to build systems in my business?

No, but you do need to understand your own processes well enough to know where they tend to break, which is a different skill than being technical. Being non-technical just means the tool side of it, choosing and configuring the right software, will take more trial and error if you're doing it yourself. That's exactly the gap a systems expert closes: we bring the tool knowledge, but the process still has to reflect how you work.