The First 100 Days: Building Service Provider Business Systems That Actually Work
You are juggling multiple clients, your inbox is a disaster zone, and you are randomly texting your team or a friend at 8:00 PM with micro-thoughts and tasks because you are terrified you’re going to forget them. You feel like you are working around the clock, but somehow, you're constantly behind.
If you are nodding your head right now, it is time to talk about service provider business systems.
In our latest podcast episode, we sat down with Saba, the brilliant founder of Her Support System and In Demand VA. Saba is an absolute powerhouse who supports female founders in running the back end of their businesses and coaches women to find their profitable skills to offer as virtual assistants. When she says she can help you free up at least 10 hours per week, she means it.
But what is a business system, exactly? It doesn't have to be a complicated piece of expensive software. Saba defines a system simply as a reliable, repeatable way of doing things.
To explain, she uses a relatable analogy from her own home: the kitchen sink. She and her fiancé created a system where he loads the dishwasher at night, and because she is up at 5 a.m., she empties it. This gives them a clean slate to start the day. Before this system, there was friction, arguments about when the dishes needed to be done and how the other person was supposed to know it was time. By establishing a specific meeting point where one loads and the other empties, the friction completely disappeared.
The exact same logic applies to your business. When you build reliable meeting points for your tasks, your team, and your clients, you free up time in your business.
If you are ready to stop drowning in your to-do list, we are breaking down a 100-day plan to implement systems that will give you your life back.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode with Saba here: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube
Month 1 (Days 1-30): Outline the Goal & Brain Dump
When you are starting from scratch, the biggest mistake you can make is immediately paying for an annual subscription to a complicated software. For your first 30 days, step away from the tech and get back to basics.
Work Backwards from the Finish Line
Before you can build a system, you have to know what you want to achieve. Saba recommends starting by outlining your end goal and working backwards.
Let's look at one of Saba's business system examples: managing a YouTube channel. If her goal is to produce four videos a month, she has to think through the steps required to get there. That means she needs a moment to brainstorm, a moment to outline, a moment to record, and a moment to edit. That outline becomes the foundation of the system.
Build Your "Notebook Hub"
You need a centralized hub to keep track of your work, but that hub can literally be a notebook. If you are wondering how to organize business ideas, grab a notebook and section it off.
- The Brain Dump: Dedicate the front section solely to getting ideas out of your head.
- The Priorities: Create a section to categorize that brain dump into actual priorities.
- The Departments: Think of your notebook (or your future software) as departments in a company. Have a "CEO space" for your high-level ideas that stay under lock and key. Create an "Operations" space for the day-to-day things you must do to grow. Then, create a "Marketing" space for sharing your work with the world.
By spending your first 30 days writing out what you are doing daily and weekly, you ensure your actions actually align with your goals before you ever touch a digital tool.
Month 2 (Days 31-60): Establish Your Platform & Manage Client Friction
Once you know your workflows, it is time to move your notebook departments into a digital hub. This is where you decide exactly where you will keep track of your progress.
Finding Your Digital Home
You do not have to overcomplicate this. Saba shared an incredibly simple hack using Google Chrome's group tabs. She keeps a tab group for her "Workspace," one for "Meetings," and one for "Calendar". Because she uses Chrome, she can move from her home office to a coffee shop to the airport, pull up her last tabs, and keep working seamlessly from any device.
However, if you are managing teams or multiple clients, you might need something heavier. For Saba, her ultimate source of truth is ClickUp. She is actually in the top 10% of users on the platform! Using a tool like ClickUp for small business operations allows you to create streamlined processes, like Saba's brilliant delegation form.
Instead of dropping random messages in Slack when she is on the go, she built a form in ClickUp that asks for the task title, a description, and who it is assigned to. She submits the form from her phone, and it lands exactly where it needs to be without bombarding her team.
Navigating the Client Onboarding Process
When you start implementing these boundaries, you will likely face resistance from your clients. Change is hard. Part of an excellent client onboarding process is performing a systems audit to show them where their gaps are and proposing a better solution.
But remember: you cannot force a rigid system on a client who isn't ready. You have to meet them in the middle. Saba shared a story about a client she desperately wanted to move into ClickUp, but she knew it would overwhelm her. Over a year and a half, Saba slowly transitioned the client from a Google Sheet, to Asana, and finally into ClickUp. Eventually, Saba just built the final system without the client's input because the client completely trusted her to handle it.
Be adaptable. If a client needs to brain dump, don't tell them to stop, just build a specific place to capture that brain dump so it works for both of you.
Month 3 (Days 61-100): Execute, Analyze, and Iterate
The final phase of your first 100 days is all about testing. You execute the work you planned, and then you use analytics and reflection to see if your new system is actually working.
The Monthly Retrospection
At the end of the month, sit down and honestly assess how things went. Did you actually use the system you set up?
Often, we find ourselves avoiding specific parts of our own systems because they feel clunky or uncomfortable. If you notice you are skipping steps, that is your clue to fix that friction point. Systems are not meant to lock you into a cage; they are meant to be changed and iterated until they serve you.
The Quarterly Business Systems Audit
To keep your business lean, you need to conduct a regular business systems audit on yourself, paying close attention to your expenses.
Are you actually using the tools you pay for? Do you have two different platforms that do the exact same thing?
When you evaluate business software, be realistic about where you are in your journey. For example, ActiveCampaign is an incredible, robust email marketing platform, but if you only have 200 subscribers, you are overpaying for a beast of a tool you aren't fully utilizing. A simpler platform like Mailchimp might be a much better fit for your current season.
This is exactly why Saba warns against locking yourself into annual software plans right out of the gate. Take the free trials, pay month-to-month, and give yourself the grace to experiment. If it isn't working, move on.
Conclusion: Step Away from the Desk
The ultimate goal of all this structuring, planning, and software auditing isn't to turn you into a robot. It is to allow you to treat your business like a job. When you have a source of truth that tells you exactly what to do during your work window, you get to check those items off and actually log off to live your life.
However, building these systems, and managing the clients who push back against them, can feel incredibly isolating. Client work takes up so much of our time; if we don't have a place to step away and focus on building our own businesses, we will never advance.
That is exactly why we created The Breakroom.
It is a space for photographers, designers, copywriters, and other creative service providers to step away from their client work, learn from sharp minds across different industries, and build their foundations together.
You shouldn't have to build your business systems completely on your own. See all the details for The Breakroom here.