Are you working long hours in your business and does it stress you out?

In this interview you will discover how Tara Brouwer CEO & Creative Strategist at Shovel Creative Inc went from working 80 long hours a week and being stressed to having her employees run her company successfully without her involvement.

You will also discover the process she went through to get her employees to use systems, how she was able to find the right people to hire and how as a result of systematizing her business she was able to land one of her biggest clients yet!

 

 

Tweetable Quote:

“Now I can actually step back & watch my employees get things done without me being a part of it!” – Tara Brouwer http://t.co/AMi8F6BTRT

— SweetProcess (@SweetProcess) May 26, 2015

 

In this Episode You will Discover:

* Why Tara’s business coaches encouraged her to write down her business processes.

* Why Tara’s biggest challenge was getting her team members to follow the systems.

* Why Tara encourages her team members to improve and document processes.

* How Tara organized checklists and workflows for each department in her business.

* How Tara put together a pitching process for new clients.

* Why Tara struggled to keep the systems simple enough for her staff to understand them.

* How Tara fosters a culture of responsibility within her business.

* How Tara finds the right people to hire for her business.

 

Episode Transcript:

OWEN: My guest today is Tara Brouwer and she is the CEO and creative strategist at Shovel Creative, Inc. Tara, welcome to the show.

TARA: Thank you for having me.

OWEN: The reason for this show is to go out there and look for entrepreneurs and who have been able to systematize their business so that it can run successfully without them. And in your case we brought you in here to talk about how you were able to do that. And before we even talk about how you’ve been able to systemize your business let’s give the listeners some of the blind blowing results that you now experience as a result of systematizing and automating your business?

TARA: Sure. I love to answer that. I would say, there’s two different sets of results. There’s internal results so that I can actually take a step back and not feel like the weight of the company and the quality of our work fully rest on my shoulders. That’s a huge burden taken off me. And then second, we’ve just been able to get better results for our clients. We’ve been able to put out better quality level of work. And just very thorough work that really sets us apart from other agencies with these checklists that we have in place and with our systems. Now, we’ve been having the best quarter ever. It can be scary especially when you’re a small business and all of a sudden your workload triples.

OWEN: And basically with the systems now it sets off a growth mode, right?

TARA: Exactly. Because we have our processes in place it’s much easier for me to higher our part-time contractors for example. With the systems they can follow the system, they can follow the checklist that we have in place. And so it also takes a lot of time away off our shoulders for training as well. And there are still some training but it’s not as intense, starting from scratch every time.

OWEN: How will you say your company has been transformed as a result of systematizing your business?

TARA: I would say that everyone knows what they need to do. Everyone has their role. And then the quality of stored aspect goes out,