The 5 Essential Business Systems You Need To Turn Your Brand Into a Magical Money Magnet

Without business systems, everyday tasks can fry and fray your nervous system … and that kills your money-making magic! 💥

You didn’t start your business to spend your mornings duct-taping together funnel tech parts, rewriting the same emails for the fifteenth time, and manually answering “how do I work with you?” over and over in your DMs, right?

And yet… here you are.

A dozen tabs open. Notes everywhere. Trying to come up with last minute social media posts at the end of the day.

And with inconsistent sales that make you question what you're even doing. Feeling like a massive imposter.

For the longest time, I thought the answer to making more money in my online business was just to work harder.

More content, more followers, more offers, and more hopeful “this will fix everything” free e-book downloads.

But the real shift for me happened when I chose to do LESS.

The moment my business stopped feeling like an overwhelming energy drain and started working like a magical money magnet was when I built my first signature business system.🧲

Not a rigid, exhausting, or overly complex system...

Just a simple, repeatable pathway that generated cash for me. It vetted clients for me, it onboarded them for me, and it delivered results. Without me having to rewrite and reinvent my entire sales process every month.

That’s when everything changed: the income, the consistency, the space in my brain, and my capacity to actually enjoy being a creative again.

Because the truth that creative and unconventional, neurospicy entrepreneurs may not ever guess about business: business systems aren’t boring or restrictive at all.

They’re the containers that allow your creative magic to work on demand, mostly on its own.

They they do not limit your freedom, they CREATE more for you!🪄

Business systems help reduce your daily cognitive load. They save you time, money, and most critically - your energy.

So if you've been STRUGGLING in your business despite working your freakin' ASS off at it, your business systems might just be what you need to examine.

Let's walk through the 5 essential business systems that you need to design first to build a profitable online business. Then, I'll share my personal experiences in designing each system within the 3 different business models.

Continue reading, OR if you prefer listening and want to hear my weird American-Australian accent mix, click below for the podcast version 🪄 🎧💫

Prefer to watch instead of read? Watch the YouTube version here (especially if you love a gothy, witchy visual aesthetic!😉) 🪄 📺💫

Very generally speaking, almost every business model runs on just a handful of the same types of systems.

Each are essential to keep the money flowing and your customers coming back for more.

1) Lead Generation & Capture Systems: (FYI, leads = emails!)

The first thing you'll need to build is a system to attract your ideal clients and customers.

It's how new people discover you and enter your world. This could be social media, SEO, referrals, ads, partnerships, etc.

You'll also need to design a way to collect and store those leads/email addresses once they show up. Something to collect and manage your email lists, forms, and landing pages.

So you MUST have a ESP, which stands for email service provider. Kit, Mailchimp, or Active Campaign, for example.

Or, depending upon your business model, a CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management software.

You need anything where you can build a form to collect an email address. And then that email then goes into a database.

Something like Dubsado, which I used for 9 years a a freelancer and absolutely loved.

Or Go High Level, which is an all-in-one marketing sales funnel platform that I use now as a marketing mentor.

This is how you can stay in front of people so they remember you exist.

2) Sales Systems (What gets you the MONEH, HONEY!)

Next, you'll need to design a process to convert interested humans into paying clients.

This can be your sales pages, your discovery calls, checkout pages, and your proposals, etc.

3) Delivery / Fulfillment System (Delivering the booty!)

This system is all about how the client or customer actually receives what they bought.

It's the onboarding, contract back-and-forth, big project workflows, course delivery, communication, and delivery timelines.

4) Operations / Workflow System

This is how the work gets organized behind the scenes. Either all by your lonesome or by hiring help to get sh*t done FAST.

It's all about task management, automations, your file storage, and project tracking.

The goal of this system, if you design it well, is to have a business that can run without you.

You want to be able to take holidays away, right? 😉

5) Money Management System (muy importante!)

This system is all about how money flows in and gets tracked. So, your invoices, payments, bookkeeping, expenses, taxes. 💸

While Dubsado and Go High Level and do invoicing and selling, you'll still need a money tracking system to do your monthly overall bookkeeping. It's important to know your numbers not just with your inflows, but with your outflows (expenses).

And tracking your profitability, not just your gross revenue.

It's critical to know your numbers at the end of each month, and you can't do that unless you are tracking what's working.

Now, if building all of these systems feels overwhelming to you, here's some good news...

Everything you are already doing can become your system. 🪄 💫

Now, some of these might seem like obvious things you have to have when you start a business. But it's the nuanced attention to processes that I want to emphasize here. The whole point of having systems is to remove some of that daily cognitive load you're carrying.

Removing millions of tiny decisions. So you can feel more free! And so you never look at a bottle of shiraz like a life raft at the end of every day!

Systems shouldn't feel heavy, complicated, and like a ton of hard work to set up.

Just start documenting your most important processes. Not all of them! Just the 6 essential ones above, and then from those, just the parts that are critical to bringing in new customers and revenue.

Make checklists for yourself, especially when you find there's a task you have to do over and over.

Checklists can help your brain out when you come back to your blog after missing a few weeks, for example.

Or make a video tutorial for yourself that you can also send to a new VA when you are ready to hire.

Systems make things FASTER, EASIER, and LESS STRESSFUL!

They take the pain away! Yeah, *PEACHES!*

ESPECIALLY if you're neurodivergent!

That's why I love systems and why they are a big part of what I can teach you in my S.W.A.N. Transformation Marketing Strategy mentoring programs. The 'S' stand for 'Signature Systems' for business and marketing.

Here are Some of The Most Useful Tools You Can Use For Your Systems: 🪄

Besides the specific software types that you'll need to get specific tasks done, you also need a system FOR your business system!

Everyday productivity software is the best option to pull together ALL of your tasks and keep your systems organized.

Here are my favorites. I use these every day, every hour!

Google Sheets (alternatively, Excel Spreadsheets)

My ADHD brain loves spreadsheets - a little too much! But they are where I park 90% of all my business systems.

I use these for EVERYTHING: My daily habit record, time-blocked schedule, my goals, content calendars, reports, content libraries, tasks lists - everything.

Here's a hot tip for you if you are in the information-devouring stage of learning about business: 🔥

Get into the habit of digitalizing your note-taking process as soon as possible into places that you can use a search bar. I made the mistake of writing notes with pen and paper for years, but if I had kept them on my computer, I could easily scan files to find what I need when I became ready to implement what I'd learned.

One of the best places to do this is..

Google Keep (or Apple Notes)

These are ESSENTIAL because you need to be able to move copy quickly and easily between a laptop and your phone. Especially for content creation.

I use them for everything from hashtags, URLS, brand color palettes, copywriting formulas, and all kinds of lists. Anything I need to pull up again and again to get work done.

Probably the note I use MOST is my emoji collection. It's much faster to copy and paste emojis off Google Keep on my desktop than it is searching for emojis in most text-editors.

Everyone needs their Signature Emoji set!

Here's my two favorite sets:

For social media engagement that attracts my tribe: 💜☠️🖤💜🖤☠️💜🖤☠️

And for all of The S.W.A.N. Programs: 🪄🦢

Asana: ( Or Trello, ClickUp, or Notion):

Asana is great for big projects, especially when you have VA's (virtual assistants) and freelance contractors working with you on them.

When I take a course on how to build a big thing, I love it when they include an Asana project template in it. It's a great way to map out step-by-step processes. These days, Asana is no longer free like it used to be though, so I prefer Google Sheets.

Pomofocus & Toptal Tomato Timers:

Ok, so here's another hot tip for you when it comes to your business systems: the best systems are designed alongside a timeline. They include restraint factors. Deadlines. This way, when you eventually outsource the tasks in that system, your VA will know exactly how long he/she should be taking to get a task done.

This is so important, cygnets!

I once outsourced a client's Instagram story creation using my Storrito account to a VA and failed to include the time restraints in the Asana project. I knew from how often I used the story batching system that I could generally get 10-15 story graphics done within an hour.

The VA took 5 hours!!!

Sure, she delivered 15 BEAUTIFUL stories, alright, but it cost me 4 more hours than it should have because I did not specify the time restraint. So she took her time to design them, focused on the deliverable of 10 to 15. Not the time I could afford to allot to that client.

That's why you want to be using a timer for every task you document BEFORE you systemize it for outsourcing.

Using a timer is also critical if you struggle with getting tasks done quickly.

I have ADHD and do not work well without constant timers on for every single task in my day.

So I even bookmark two timers in my bookmark bar: one set to 40 minutes, the other set to 20, so I can save time on having to change the settings!

I've had 18 years of experience working for myself at home, which has made me an expert at time management and working fast.

Check out Episode #6 of the Hexotica podcast to hear the details about how I manage time as an ADHD solopreneur.

Storytime! What I've Learned About Business Systems From My 3 Different Businesses Over the Past 18 Years

So, as you know if you've been listening to my podcast / YouTube or followed me for a while, I'm currently in my third business evolution...

I've experienced the ups and downs of cash flow in three different business models.

Here's a quick summary of what I learned from each:

In my handmade gothic-burlesque accessories business, my income was seasonal-dependent.

The money flowed leading up to Halloween, The Melbourne Cup (that's a big horse racing day here in Australia for my American friends!), and Christmas.

But those other months? Sometimes I struggled to break even!

That was before I became obsessed with marketing like I am now.

So, I couldn't see the inefficiencies that could have been eliminated, delegated, or automated as I easily do now.

Like many creatives, I just wanted to MAKE sh*t, not study marketing all day. 😂

But if I had hired a professional marketing consultant, I could have learned how to generate cash consistently, year-long.

Instead, I surfed a seasonal cash tide for 8 consecutive years, using the downtime as an excuse to go traveling overseas.

The business system that I excelled at with this first e-commerce business was my delivery / fulfillment system. I processed and shipped items FAST. Had lots of happy customers, and very few negative complaints or returns.

And the business system I failed to design in that first business was lead attraction and capture. A system to consistently sell on the BACK end through email.

So that's another hot tip for you if you're an Etsy witch or you're selling physical products on sites like Shopify...🔥

If you're relying on only the store-front end of business for your sales, your business is dangerously under-optimized, cygnet.

Get that lead generation and email collection system revving along like a crazy email machine.

Create some evergreen sales sequences that will sell for you while you sleep, no matter the season!

This is what I teach in my SWAN Academy first-level mentoring program. 🪄🦢

You can learn more about how to do email in episode #16 of the Hexotica podcast, 'Email Marketing VS Newsletter: Simple Explanation for Creatives Who Don’t Do Boring Biz Jargon.'

When I was a freelance social media manager, my income was extremely consistent.

Very reliable. From about year 3 when I got the hang of finding higher-paying clients and a strong flow of referrals. That kept me going for 9 years. Lots of travel, lots of laksas! 🍜

And that was because social media managers work on month to month retainers. The same exact amount per client per whatever package of deliverables they get from you.

It's one of the better freelance careers because of that; project-based freelancers have to learn how to keep their new client pipelines consistently filled. Or, oh FARK, it's ramen noodle night again! 😅

The business systems that freelancing helped me nail down were my sales systems. I learned how to sell in the DMs, do discovery calls, how to close a sale on a call, and how to do paid proposals. In Dubsado, I automated the entre process from client inquiry to post-proposal invoicing.

The last thing you want to be doing in your business is manually typing out the same damn emails over and over!

I teach all of the systems you need to become a freelance service provider in my SWAN Agency program. That program is especially suited for aspiring social media managers and digital nomads. 🪄🦢

Now that I'm a marketing strategist and mentor, my income is campaign-dependent

In my current business model as an educator and mentor, I'm using systems that I learned a LOT about from the 6 and 7-figure-earning clients that I supported as a freelancer.

A coaching or mentoring educational business like this requires monthly to fortnightly targeted promotional campaigns to keep it going.

These can be LIVE webinars, free challenges, or segmented email blasts, for example.

Outside of constant promotions, in this model of business you want to have multiple revenue streams. Things like ongoing subscription memberships, affiliate revenue, and lots of low-ticket digital products. Understanding buyer psychology and having automated sales funnels is critical for this model of business.

Once you get a product or service selling well, it's what we call validated. You've sold it many times, your customers love it, and you lve delivering it.

So the next step is designing a sales funnel for it and hooking it up to paid ad campaigns.

This is what I teach in my SWAN Executive mentoring program. 🪄🦢

Ready to design and build a Signature Business System Yourself?

If you'd like to learn how to get started, I can show you exactly what you'll need to do for each system. I'll help you design, map out, and build each system with all the essential parts and tools to help make your business profitable.

You can check out my S.W.A.N. Transformation mentoring programs at Hexotica.online

Or, if you want to dip your toes in first, grab my FREE SWAN Transformation Marketing Strategy Guidebook.

Kickstart your online empire today!👑

It's a FREE 30-page PDF printable resource guide of every single step to help you start, grow, and run an online business - in order!

I've also included all the mindset, goal-setting, and weekly self-coaching steps you'll need to build self-trust as you scale your business.

Download the FREE complete step-by-step guidebook by signing up for the form below! 👇