Good Hearted Business Owner & Systemic Systems
Systemic systems are the systems you have inside your business, whether you're aware of them or not (inventory management, client/data management, passing information from one person to another within your team, how your accounting gets done, how your product is delivered, etc.). In relationship to branding, your systems cultivate the branding your business has. But beyond being a high or low-cost service and matching the level of customer service to my product, your systems are built around being a good-hearted owner. I suspect that your systems are built for a higher product than that which you offer.
Does your product cost $20 but you're available to support that product and the customer who bought it, for hours at a time? Your system then, isn't in line with the level of product or service you offer; you're over-delivering. You can determine whether you're over-delivering by starting on either side of the customer service process. Start with the product--producing, packaging, and delivering the product and the receipt of and customer support of that product. Or, start with the customer service, move backward toward your product, how you obtained the product, the research, and development it took to create the product, and how you market and finance the product. What are the systems associated with each step of your product? Answering that question will show you the systems that encompass about 80% of your systemic systems. Beyond that includes internal systems having to do with your business management systems such as your accounting and finance behind the work, and your employee management system.
Most good-hearted business owners overdeliver by providing a high level of customer service on low-margin products.
You set yourself and your business up when you operate by overdelivering. Ground your parameters inside of what the business needs for the business to have a win. Take the example of mow and blow gardeners? For $100 a month you pay a company who shows up with a 2-man team and in 15-20 minutes they cut your grass and blow away the leaves and cut grass. That 2-man team is making $20 every twenty minutes at best. Of course, there's travel and packing/unpacking time in between so they're probably making about $40 per hour if they're able to get two locations cut in an hour which is $20 per person an hour. My gardener had a team of 5 people but he cut three houses per street. If he slows down his system or his houses are further apart and he has to drive in between, he's losing those 20 minutes and $20 per hour. His overhead is low but he has employees to pay, equipment to buy and fix, gas, etc. His product has a low price point which means his systems being effective are crucial. For your business to have a healthy bottom line it gets the right clients it needs and that it's not giving out too much and therefore unable to sustain itself. Your business should have a healthy 3-month reserve account.
Your vision sets up your systems. Where inside your systems do you have things set up for a win? Good-hearted business owners tend to have weak internal systems because their time and study has been spent in their industry and creating a quality product and good customer service around that product. Generally, I find that good-hearted business owners take better care of others that they take care of themselves. These are people whose internal business systems might be weak because they don't protect the business like they don't protect themselves. These are people who don't pay for a bookkeeper, who don't have a mapped out process of delivery of your product.
My advice for those business owners is to think of your business as a private entity, then it will feel less selfish to say, "I'm going to make sure my business wins" instead of "I'm going to make sure I win." You opened the business, so your commitment to yourself, your employees, and clients are for your business to continue, you must protect the business systems inside it.