NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.
The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.
Okay, let's jump in.
Hello, welcome to this week's episode of lion hearted. See, I, so this week I'm going to be talking about the systems. Now I haven't done an episode on systems so far. Cause I felt like, oh, it's going to be a bit dry. Like me listing out all [00:01:00] the systems they use and why I use them. But
last week I ran a four day event called inevitable and it was all about how to create a business where revenue doesn't rely on your time and energy in that moment. So it gives you that kind of disconnect between if I want to earn this amount this month, I'm going to have to really, put all my time and energy into it.
And then the same again, the next month and the same again, the next month. I'm really allowing you to have revenue locked in, in advance so that each month, you know how much you've got coming in. And yes, if you want to generate more future revenue. Absolutely you can at your time and energy into it.
But also if you've got other things that you want to focus on, whether in the business or personal it means that you can actually do that without worrying that your revenue's going to drop and it's going to be stressful. And you're going to have to then Hustle to make enough money or not be able to pay yourself as much. So that was the goal of the four day event.
And it was absolutely incredible. And over the three days I covered creating a superfan system,
Where you bring people in, nurture them, and then you have a goal offer, which you want them to buy [00:02:00] from you before they're then in your world and potentially move on to working with you in other ways. Then I went on to talk about a stacking revenue and in particular, how I have stacked my revenue over the last sort of 12 to 18 months, so that I have a lot of different ways that money can be generated without having loads in those of different offers. And then finally I talked about lion hearted leadership.
The systems, team, mindset, and identity, you need to build a business where you are that separate CEO and not embedded in the business all the time, doing all the things and being that sort of central point where if you're removed everything, grinds to a halt. Now in that final session, I covered systems, team, and mindset and identity. And actually the systems part. I was the part I had the most feedback on in terms of it being incredibly useful to help people structure their systems.
Think about future systems and work out how. They can make the most of them because , it's so hard to know, isn't it I don't know which task management system should I be using? Is this the best one? Where should [00:03:00] I? How's my courses. Like what email system should I use? Can be really hard and we can just pick one and start using it without really understanding what it is that we need to be thinking about for our own business.
But also if we want to scale how we would use that with a team. So I thought why would do today is give you a little bit of insight into why shared last week on the systems, both assistance I use and the challenges I've had in terms of having to change systems. As my business has grown. Ah, it's cost me a lot of time and energy. Having to adapt because I didn't start building systems with the intention to scale and grow. So I want to help you do that.
Now, if you've already got established systems and you're thinking, yeah, I've actually got everything in place, but maybe it's not working in quite the way I wanted to. It doesn't feel like, all my systems are working. I can just take a day off and everything works on it.
I had that. I had a lot of systems. I had a lot of automations. What I didn't have was an overarching strategy and organization plan. And that really was the missing thing for me. So the first step of what I did when I was really [00:04:00] sorting out my systems was I created a blueprint. It was probably a bit of an audit at that point of what are the systems that Sophie Griffis co users.
And I say, Sophie Griffis co, and not me intentionally. Because actually what I needed to do is step away from, which systems to, I prefer like, oh yeah. I like Vox. Ah, that's quite good because it can use voice notes actually. What is it that I need to use as a business so that I can scale and grow?
So the first thing I did was an audit and I organized the systems into operational systems, client delivery systems and business growth systems. So I'm going to go through each of those three core areas today and give you a bit of an insight on the systems I use, the decisions I had to make and then how I've integrated my team to bring it all together. So the first focus was on this idea of a tech stack. So what is Sophie Griffith co systems like? What's my tech stack as a business. And the reason why I had to think about this and this might not be applicable [00:05:00] to everyone, but I am a little bit of a systems magpie.
I love a system. I actually love learning new systems. I love using new systems. I love setting systems up. I don't love using them consistently over time. So what I had was a lot of systems that I used and had set up, but was using for like lots of different things. And ultimately there's quite a lot of duplication when I did my audit.
That's why I kind of realized. I also realized that as a inherent people pleaser. When someone who has spent a lot of time working on that since I realized that what I was doing was adapting my systems for my clients. So I'd say to my clients, like you have access to me in between our calls.
What system do you use? Oh, you use box. So yeah, I can use box, so that's fine. Oh, you use, click up. Okay. Let's use, click up. Oh, you use slack. Great. We'll use slack. So what ended up happening was I was communicating with my clients across loads of different systems.
Now my theory, is that I am actually really comfortable with tech. I find it uncomfortable to ask my clients, to use a system that they [00:06:00] weren't familiar with, or they weren't confident in or felt uncomfortable with. I've had to really work on that because ultimately me working in a load of systems that suit my clients is fine from a fact that I can use the systems, but it wasn't efficient.
It didn't support me when I was working with a team because the team had to then have access to all those random, different systems as well. And it also meant I didn't have one. Place where everything was together, where I could view my work work. If you will, my clients comms, I could feel my tasks.
I really struggled with identifying exactly how much I had on my plate and making sure that I didn't miss anything. And I was starting to use my VA to just like collate all the different tasks into one system, which wasn't a very efficient use of her time. So, what I did was decided on my Sophie Griffith co core systems.
Now the business operational systems, to be honest with relatively simple. So for example, accounting, I use their a. Banking. I use Monzo payment processing. I chose Stripe over PayPal mostly because it's just easier to use. My legal [00:07:00] contracts. I get all of my contracts from Lucy legal. And then I used up Saturday to send them to clients, to get them signed. And then I do all my invoicing through dub sourdough. And it links into Stripe and Xero as well. So those systems to be honest are relatively easy.
The only one I think I'm probably on the fence about is double asado. It's quite a complex system. I've used it for like five or six years now. I've got really early on into my business journey and I've got a lot of stuff set up in there. If I was doing again, I don't know if I would use it.
There's a lot of functionality, but I don't use it overly efficiently to be honest at the moment. And I'm actually starting to move away from a lot of it as well, but for now that's where we do everything. Team operational systems. This was a really big one for me. So the core thing with my team operational systems is that we need a central place for task management.
Before I had a team and it was just me I would write everything in a notebook. It really helps my brain. To write things down. Client calls my own task list, inviting us to do list crossing things off. I find it incredibly [00:08:00] satisfying. I absolutely love it. And I still to be honest, do do it.
However I did realize as soon as I started working with the team. That, it wasn't really efficient for me to write everything down. I wasn't having to copy it for them, they couldn't see what I was doing. Everything being online, being able to allocate dates to it, people to it. I realize I did need to embrace a task management system, just even as simple level, just creating somewhere where there was a centralized to-do list. So I decided on click up.
I don't actually even really remember making the decision. I just tried a few and click up, seem to click with my brain the most. It's not the easiest one. I'm not sure that I would recommend it for everybody. To be honest, you have to be quite tech minded to be comfortable with it. And that is a challenge I've come across as I've grown the team and asking everybody to use, click up because it does require some training and it's often a bit of a learning curve for people.
But I have spent a huge amount of time and energy working with people on it. Creating what is now an [00:09:00] incredibly comprehensive task management system that got a lot of automation that has all the team in. It holds a huge amount of data. And it is now our single central system. The goal is to make this all one place of truth for me and the teams.
If I go in there, I should be able to see. What is on all of my team's plates, what they've got on daily, weekly, monthly, I should be able to see what's on my plate. And I should be able to also see all the projects we've got going on. So is that one central place of truth? Now you might think I'm really not at that point where I need something so complex.
And the core ones I would be looking at are Assana. Notion and click up. Those are the three ones I have used and the, I think are probably the best ones. Trello is a good starting point, but I find it becomes quite limited quite quickly. Notion is great and I know it's really, really popular. Especially with like creative, cause it's really visual. The problem with notion is it's a lot more challenging to run a team with notion.
The actual [00:10:00] team element is really, really hard. Now that's not to say you shouldn't use it. And I imagine over time that. Notion will get better and allowing you to work with the team. On it, but at the moment, I would say Asarnow and click up. If you're looking to grow a team, it would be the batter options. Now calls I've also just always defaulted to Zim. So this is like the calls I use for my team.
I use for clients I use for everything. However fundamentally I just don't enjoy zoom. It doesn't enjoy me. I have endless problems with it. And recently I've started using something called butter. Which I really, really like. I also use something called fathom, which is my AI note taker, if you like, and if you haven't used it, it's incredibly powerful.
It's so good and effective. I've used quite a lot of AI tools. It's much, much better than zooms in belt. One it's much better than any I've come across the summaries. Of the calls. They comes up with actions. It took gives you summaries are spot on. I've never come across one. That's been quite so good.
So I'd really highly recommend fathom. And then I had to decide [00:11:00] on communication. So before I was using. Voxer. I was using slack. I was using Trello. I was using WhatsApp with some of my team because that's what they used. What I kind of had to say was, I'm just going to draw a line in the sand here and say everything is on slack.
All our comms will, our chatting, all our voice notes. That's going to be on slack. And then all our tasks are going to be on click up. So all my client communication. We have team spaces.
We have client spaces. When I did inevitable last week, that was on slack. And I know slack doesn't see everybody but there isn't one system that does. Some people said they didn't join in with the challenge because it was on slack and they don't like slack. And that's absolutely fair enough.
If I'd have done a Facebook group, some people would have said that it like a Facebook group there's so many systems and people have preferences. You kind of just have to decide what works for you. And for me, keeping everything in one place is the best way for my brain to not get too overwhelmed. And then probably the final team operational systems is just like the Google suite.
So we use Google drive, Google [00:12:00] calendar, Google email because keeping all in one place is really important to me. I've never gotten well with Dropbox. And for me, just paying for Google suite makes sense. So those are the business and team operational systems. And that, to be honest, it's probably most of the systems that I use. There are others. There are specialist systems I use , obviously I use ads manager.
I don't even really count that as a system, to be honest, but yeah, I use ads manager. I use Zapier a lot to connect things and make things happen in the background.
Probably the biggest one. I haven't mentioned that is. Thrivecart so I transferred over to thrive cart. Probably about six months ago now. Both from a payment processing perspective. So I used to use dub Saturday for my payments for clients. I now use thrive cart for pretty much everything started using it.
When I launched the audience builder course, actually in February. I also got five caught learn, which is why then host all my courses as well. I have used many course hosting platforms. Over the years. And for me, I'm for clients as well. I often work on their courses and supporting them.
I am really familiar [00:13:00] with Kajabi with Kartra obviously thrive guy also used to use something called searchy, I've used all sorts. I've also experienced, being on the other side of using a lot of course platforms as well.
And the reason why I chose Thrivecart learn is because it's a one-off payment. It is really simple to use it. Doesn't have a lot of fancy bells and whistles. I didn't want an all in one system. So like Kartra and Kajabi, you can have your email in there, your sales pages, your website, like it's literally everything in one for quiet, hefty monthly fee.
If I'm honest I had already set my website up in Squarespace. I had already got my email list in MailerLite. I just didn't want to transfer everything over. So I chose five caught land and I'm really, really happy with it. I think it works really well. The only downside is that it doesn't have an app. So if people are consuming your content on their phone, it's not great.
However, because of the nature of my content, a lot of it is where you are. Watching me do stuff with ads and then you're doing it [00:14:00] yourself alongside. So the reality is most of my clients actually watch my content on a laptop anyway, so it doesn't have a huge impact for me. So those are the core systems. Then what I did was look at clients' systems and often this is more about then how do I combine the core systems to make these different areas of the client experience?
Say for example, onboarding. Client will come through, they will pay in thrive cart. They will then do that contract in dub Sada. Pardot. Zapier then puts them into my email system., it creates their private channel in slack. It sends them a welcome message.
It sends them a link to put their first call in my diary. It sends them an onboarding questionnaire so that I get all the info that I need. It sets up a templated list in click up. So in click up, we have a client area, so they don't use click up. That's just for my team, but it will set them up and it will create a list.
And allocate the right people in my team to different tasks. My VA will get tasked to say, like [00:15:00] send the onboarding gift. And my ads managers will get a task to say, like, set yourself up in the ad system. So there's all that stuff that happens automatically.
Zapier is a huge, huge part of that. And I've done quite a lot of work on. Creating that system so that it flows really nicely.
In Octavia, I'm starting a mastermind. The Lionheart is CEO mastermind. And a mini mind as well, called inevitable and actually in both of those. This fundamental systems, like which systems are your business systems is going to play a key part in both of these. Now with the mini mind, we're really going to be looking at , what are those core systems?
How do we get them set up effectively? And how do we sort of future proof it for you? And we set it up in the way that feels simple. And effective and usable in the mastermind. We're going to be moving on to these slightly more complex things. So complex. Zaps like with multiple steps in it. Because actually these small things that once you have it set up, it might only save, you say five or 10 [00:16:00] minutes, every client, but knowing that once you send a link to a client, all of this happens in the background without anyone needing to do anything is actually incredibly powerful to be able to separate yourself from the business. In terms of your time and energy.
So if a client says, yes, I want to join. And you can send them the link, your not then stressing about like, oh, when am I going to be able to send them the contract? I need to change that bit of it. And I have, I need to generate the invoice and then I'll need to set up their slack channel
and they hope they can get some time in my diary. So it really, really allows this whole process to work I'm feel really luxury. And special to the client as well. So it gets everyone off in a really good star. And we've actually got a systems expert. Who's going to be working across the mastermind to support with this kind of level of systems as well. Then the next thing I had to decide on for clients was communication. I've talked about this quite a lot. So my core systems really for a client. So how we communicate with them is on slack. On Google. We have a shared Google drive and then zoom.
[00:17:00] Although I think going forward, it'll probably be butter once they make that switch. Those are like the three core communication channels I have with clients.
And then finally, I really had to have a look at business growth systems. So really here, what I'm talking about is marketing, but it does kind of encompass a little bit more than that. Say for example, Social media. Obviously I use Instagram and we actually natively in Instagram and in LinkedIn as well. But we use click up to plan out all of our contents and my social media manager is in click up and we have a monthly meeting to look ahead about all the content that we're going to be creating for the next month. I'm really heavily involved in content, because for me, it's really important that it still feels like me but we map everything out.
We have a calendar, we have a task list. And then when it goes through stages, I mean, I could actually do like an entire podcast on our marketing systems because I have worked. A lot on them. And it's really important for me that they feel slick and supportive for me and for my team as [00:18:00] well.
So for example, my lovely social media manager will go in and as she creates the content, she can then allocate the statuses to it. So it might say for review, for me, that will then come into my task list so that I can review out.
She might ask me to specifically review the caption or the graphic. So there's a way that we work. So we always know where the content is in the cycle. And it comes to me when I need to review it but it goes back to her when it's ready to come up with schedule and go live. We use Canva, which is probably unsurprising.
Although the recent changes in the pricing have been a little bit concerning, I don't think I'll move away from Canva. I don't think there's another alternative at the moment that is making it feel for me. Like it's worth moving. I mean, I've been literally using it for seven years.
It's got so much in there. But I will have a think about how many of my team I have in there and how we use it because the price hikes are just eye watering I think I'm going to just try and work out. How can I make it the most cost effective way of using it? And then we also use many chat. Which again is one of those strategies that is. Interesting when you're growing. [00:19:00] But the reality is this becomes essential as you're scaling and you want to separate yourself from the business. So being able to know that a post is scheduled by my social media manager and it can go at any time.
And the many chat system is there. And allows, people to get the links they need. Whether that's the podcast, whether that's a lead magnet, whether that's information on my latest program is all there. And people can request at any time without me having to go in and double check if they've commented and if it's kind of gone into the DMS, et cetera. And then for the podcast, I mean, this is very specialist, but I used a script. To record the podcast.
I also use a script to edit all my videos. So it's a text based editing, from any video or audio, it generates the script. Like a transcription. Of the content, and then you can just literally edit the words as if you're editing, like a word document. So if I wanted to remove some content from this audio, I would just like highlight the words and delete it. It has been such a game changer for me to do [00:20:00] quick editing of things like the podcast, but also videos.
I send my clients a lot of videos. I create videos, obviously for my course content. So these can be created and edited all in descript I use video recording all the time and descript has made it so easy to record and edit and share it as well. I use captivate to distribute the podcast. I use my website, which is on Squarespace to have all the different podcast episodes. And then we use click up again to manage the podcast process of, which episodes are recorded, which ones have been edited, which ones are scheduled , so we can always see where we're at with all the different episodes. And those really are the core systems that I use for growth and marketing at the moment. Although I wouldn't rule out there being any more in the future as well. That's been a bit of a deep dive into systems and how you can set them up. And if you're not really systems minded, you might be like, oh my God, that was just absolutely ridiculous. If you're excited by systems, you might be like, yes.
I just want to go with all of this out. My key takeaways from this are. Split it down [00:21:00] into the three core segments, your business and team systems, your client's systems and your growth systems.
It will really help you see. Where you're missing things where overlaps, where you haven't got systems in place. But it's not just about the tech stack. And that's really what I learned. When I started setting up the tech and then bringing the team in, because actually you can have processes in place. but for me in particular, like the experience my client has, it's really, really important.
So it's absolutely all about the tone. The way we communicate. For example, I have all this tech in place. But when I work with clients one to one I voiced need them every Monday. Now that is not really a tech thing, but it's a process thing. And that's what I've really had to understand that. Once you've got the tech in place it's then working on the experience processes as well.
So what are the softer things that happen on top of the tech? How often do we contact clients? Well, in slack, like to voice. note them on a Monday now, as I've brought a team in my team have started doing that sometimes I [00:22:00] often do it as well.
But what I've had to realize is when I'm kind of explaining to the team why we do that Monday, check-in actually, it's not a case of. oh, , here's your ad results. This is what's going on for me. It's about that connection with them. It's about that reassurance that , we're all over.
What's going on with them. We sort of cheerleading them. on, we're saying, oh, this is going on this week. Like good luck with that. We're saying, oh, this is not going so well, , with the ads and therefore, this is what we're doing this week. Or, actually this week we need this from you.
It's really about that, connection. Building that ongoing relationship and helping them feel like secure and what we're doing. It's not just about , we give them. The ad results. And so I've had to really kind of work on how the experience and the processes layer on top of the attack.
And again, that is something I think is really important and that we'll be doing a lot of work on. And focus on. in the mini mind and the mastermind, because no matter how simple or complex your tech is being able [00:23:00] to share. With people, even if it's just a VA, who's coming into your world
The reality is the actual experience is so much more than that. I like to go back to clients in the same day. I like to use this tone.
On this situation, I do this in this situation. I do that. If a client is messaging me on Instagram and on email, this is how we handle it. So many things that is kind of beyond just the tech. And that I think is really what's made the difference in integrating the team into the business is that yes, you can have the tech and the automation set up, but understanding that it is so much more than that is really, really important. I'm going to do another episode on the team as well, because how I've integrated the team into the systems and some of the changes that I've had to make. For example, moving from Voxer to slack. So that I stopped becoming the bottleneck has been absolutely key to the business, running less on my own time and energy.
I'm going to share that in next week's episode. I hope that has been really useful,
as I said, the Lionheart is CA [00:24:00] mastermind. And inevitable, the mini mind, both of their founding cohorts start in October. So. incredibly excited. And I just wanted to share with you a little bit about both of them. So you can decide if either one of them might be a good fit for you. The underpinning pillars for both of them are the superfan system. So creating and setting up an ads powered system that grows and nurtures your audience and leads towards a goal offer. So that's an offer that sells from a sales page. So you can be selling and building trust every single day, whether you're working or not.
We're also. looking at revenue stacking to scale. Now this is not about more offers. It's about creating a structure in your business that supports sustainable, scalable growth. Whether it's a low ticket funnel offer having a team to support client delivery or creating more of an agency model. It's really, isn't about a type of business.
This is about a way of thinking about stacking your revenue now. And it's not about jumping into hundreds of different ways straight away either. This is about sustainable growth. So building things [00:25:00] overtime. And then finally, it's the lighthearted leadership.
So if you truly want a business that doesn't rely on your time and energy to thrive. You really do need to look at simple systems and effective team. I'm building your identity as a CEO. Now the Lionheart is CEO. mastermind. As for you, if you've already got core offers, you've got some scalable offers, maybe too many, and you're just not promoting them right now. You might have a podcast or written a book or both, but you know, if you truly want to create a business where your revenue isn't tied to your time and energy, you need to be a hell of a lot more intentional about how you're growing your business. You know, you probably need to start streamlining your offers, investing in team support and actually start leveraging ads, but doing on your own, you know, it won't happen and not. nearly fast enough.
So if that sounds perfect, the Lionheart is CEO is for you. I've created a little video that explains more, and that is in the show notes as well as the sales page, which will tell you more. There's also some exclusive bonuses for the founding cohort, including the [00:26:00] opportunity. If you'd have some done for you, add support.
Now the inevitable mini mind came about from the inevitable challenge last week. Now this is for people who are not new to running your own business. You love running your business, but you're really ready to take upper level and make it more than just you.
And start seeing yourself as a business owner. With secure and predictable revenue. You're probably aiming for those consistent three to five K months, you have a core offer. But you want to start to introduce additional revenue streams, maybe use ads. Add some systems in, or maybe even some teams support, you know, you want to scale but you want to prioritize getting those right foundations in place so that when you're really ready to fly, you can dial up the revenue without burning out.
And if that sounds perfect for you, then I would love for you to watch the video as well , in the show notes. And that explains more about the mini mind as well as how you. can get access to the exclusive Bita price.
When you join the founding cohort. If you've got any questions that you're like, I just not sure which one is right for me, Sophie then [00:27:00] absolutely just drop me a DM on Instagram and I am more than happy to have a bit of a chat. Often it will be invoice note form because that's my favorite. And we can work out which one is right for you, or even jump on a call.
If that's going to be easiest. I hope you found today's episode useful and I will see you next week.
Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.
Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.