361: What Tech Does Your Small Business Actually Need? (And What's Just a Distraction?)

Hey there, Suzy here. If your business is working but it still feels like everything runs through you, I want to invite you to something new that I'm hosting. It's called the leaders table and it is an masterclass or a typical training. It's actually a six-part online series for women business owners who are ready to leave differently. Because there comes a point in your business where you stop asking what do I do next and you start asking how do I want to leave this business? Now every month from May to October we'll tackle the real specific challenges that come with leading a business with the team. Things like decision-making and getting buy-in, not being the bottleneck anymore. It's going to be practical, focused and a different kind of room, one where you can actually think, reflect and make better decisions. If that sounds like what you need right now, you can learn more at herbusiness.com/leaderstable. That's herbusiness.com/leaderstable. I'd love to see you there. [Music] Hi and welcome to the Herbusiness Podcast where we believe you can run your business by your rules. Today isn't asked Suzy episode. I am Suzy and we're talking about something that I think every business owner is navigating right now and that is tech over one. Because honestly we're living in a time where there is always another tool, like they're coming out by the second. Another platform, another AI app, another system promising to save you time and grow your business and completely change your life. I want to start today with a slightly embarrassing story. That is answering the question. The question we're answering today is, what technology do I need in my small business and what is a distraction? That is a question that was asked by one of our members. As I said, I want to start with a slightly embarrassing story. Many years ago when I was running my boutique agency for speakers and authors, we decided we needed a new website and we didn't just invest in a website. We invested over the website of all websites. It had e-commerce, event bookings, full integrations, all the bells and whistles and it cost us around $30,000. Now at the time that was kind of what sophisticated websites cost and on paper it looked perfect but in reality it became one of the biggest operational headaches in our business. We couldn't update anything ourselves, every change needed the developer, it constantly caused us headaches, it slowed us down and somehow, despite all that money, it had no SEO capability which today just seems insane but it just wasn't built into it. But we kept going with it because we had already invested so much and that's the trap, isn't it? The sunk cost trap. Now eventually we walked away from it entirely, we had it for a number of years and the lesson I learned wasn't don't invest in technology, it was this, just because something is powerful doesn't mean it's right for you or your business. And I think that lesson matters now more than ever because right now technology is moving at lightning speed, especially AI. And if we're not careful we can spend more time learning tools than actually growing our business. So today I want to talk about what tech your business actually needs, what creates leverage and what might be a distraction for you because I don't believe the goal is to have more tech. I think the goal is to have more leverage. Technology in your business should save you time, it should reduce friction, it should create consistency, it should help you serve your customers better and it should support your business to grow sustainably. Now if your tech is causing confusion or duplication or complexity that's not leverage, that's an overhead and a burden. So rather than giving you a giant list of random tools that will probably change tomorrow, I want to walk you through some areas that I believe every business owner needs to think about when it comes to their tech stack and by tech stack I mean what is the different tech that they have in their business. And I want to say you do not need to master all of this overnight because one of the biggest blockers I see among women business owners is tech overwhelm. And there are so many options that people freeze. They worry about choosing the wrong thing, they think they need to understand every detail before getting started or they start implementing something, they get halfway through and then they abandon it because it's just too freaking hard. And I see this all the time and here's what I want you to hear, you don't have to figure it out alone, you don't need to become the technical expert in everything. I certainly haven't. But for example we have people on our team who are great with tech, who handle the tech. In fact we even do some tech consulting for our clients who are women business owners who don't really want to know how to set up their CRM or don't really want to know how to do that or automation but they need someone to do it for them. So be willing to ask for support if this is not an area that comes naturally for you, certainly doesn't for me. Be willing to ask questions, be willing to lean on people who know more than you in certain areas because the truth is shiny object syndrome is real. New tools are designed and they feel exciting that feeling of, "Oh this could change everything." That is literally part of the marketing but not every tool deserves a place in your business. So let's talk about what actually does matter. And the first area of your tech stack is visibility into your business. And this is where I think so many business owners unintentionally disconnect themselves from growth because if you can't clearly see what's happening in your business you cannot make strategic decisions. Now this includes your financial management systems and your CRM, your customer relationship management system. Now I'm starting with finances for a reason. Now for years I told myself I wasn't a numbers person and maybe you have said that too. Maybe you say, "Well I'm a creative or that's just not my strong suit. I never did well in school at math." But over time here's what I realized you don't need to become an accountant but you do need visibility. And what I mean is you need to know what revenue is coming in. Whether it's growing or declining. What profit actually looks like. What your cash flow situation is. Like when is money coming in and how much of it? What offers a performing well? Which of your products and services are actually worthwhile? And which ones are quietly draining your resources? And technology makes it easier than ever now to be able to see into your business. Because your financial systems can show you patterns, trends, opportunities. And I think that's one of the major differences between businesses as a stock and businesses that scale sustainably. And the owner who are willing to look and see what is happening in their finances. But that needs a system, right? It can't be like a bunch of receipts in a shoe box which I'm sure nobody does anymore. But it's just having a simple financial system and someone putting the numbers in and spitting out the reports that tell you how healthy your business is financially. And the same goes with your CRM. Your customer relationship management system is not just a database. It's the heartbeat of your customer journey. Because it helps you understand who your customers are, what they care about, what they've purchased. And how to communicate with them in a more meaningful way. And that matters because businesses grow through relationships, not through random broadcasting emails, scattergun. Okay. So CRM and finances is where we're starting. The second area and that is around visibility into your business. The second area of your tech stack is how work moves through your business. And here's what I mean. This is your communication, this is your project management, and this is your sales and marketing systems. And this is where a lot of businesses become unnecessarily chaotic. So internally your team needs clarity. People need to know what's happening, who's responsible, what the priorities are, where does the information I need live. Otherwise communication ends up being scattered across emails, texts, voice notes, Google Docs, sticky notes, Slack, things fall through the cracks. And if you're a solo pronoun listening right now, this still matters because even when you work alone, your brain needs systems. I know I've written brilliant ideas on sticky notes before only to find them three months later, still attached to my desk. Oh, that was a really good idea. Missed the boat on that one. A good project management system removes the mental load for everyone. It gives your ideas somewhere to live. It helps work actually move forward because people know, here's where we're going, here's what needs to happen, here's who's doing it, here's when it needs to be done by. And once you create something inside a project management system, you can duplicate it. And so the next time you create a webinar or a podcast episode or a proposal or you put on a live event or you do a launch for a new line of products, the bones of it are already in there. And you just change the dates and times and places and people. And now you have a working list of what needs to be done. And we, whether we are creating a new ebook or a new webinar or a new membership promotion or launching a new retreat or a new course, everything lives inside of our project management system. And everybody knows what is done at any time. So I can look at any time and this is another area of visibility and I can see how we're tracking, who's behind, to someone need extra resources. Okay, I hope that's clear. So I want to talk about another area and that is sales and payment. So this one sounds obvious but it's incredibly important. If people want to buy from you, it should be simple. Easy and clear and seamless. The fewer barriers between someone deciding to buy and actually paying you the better. Okay, so what are your sales and payment systems? And so it could be a good time to review those. Now there are so many options available today. You don't need all of them. But are you offering the options that people want? Like I know that people like to buy our courses using PayPal. And for the longest time, we only offered credit card. But now we have PayPal. Again, this sounds really simple but it's just It was just a slight omission that was causing people to stop or people to call those who bothered to call and say, "Oh, is it possible to pay with pay power? I don't really want to put my credit card in." I'm not sure. But just really looking at, "Am I making it easy for people to pay for me? Do I have the right technology?" And again, what are you paying for your sales and payment system? Is there better way? What are your credit card merchant fees? Is it time to go to the bank and say, "Hey, could you do me a better rate?" I can't tell you many times we've saved money. Just by going to the bank and saying, "Is it possible to review our credit card commissions?" What we pay, our percentages, can we change those? And they'd go, "Yes, I remember when we used to ship a lot of physical products and we would go to Australia Post to periodically and say, "Hey, can you do us a better rate?" And they're like, "Yeah, well, based on the volume move done, we definitely can." So just paying attention. All right, we're going to talk about marketing systems and automation now, because visibility in your business is essential, not just what the visibility we talked about before of being able to see into your finances and to your customer world, but the visibility of you in the world. Marketing can be come exhausting very quickly if everything depends entirely on you to show up and manually do everything every day. I was having this exact conversation with a mentorry today. Right? So your tech should support consistency in your marketing, scheduling content, repurposing content, creating content, staying visible, nurturing relationships, and continuing to show up even during super busy periods. So what are your marketing technologies that allow you to do that? There's automation tools for scheduling, there's design tools for designing your socials. There's so much technology in this area of marketing systems and automation. And if you are doing things manually, then you really want to look at what can be automated. And again, just tap our first, we know some automation specialists who might be able to help put some of these things in place for you. And when we talk about marketing systems, that could include you know, a design tool like can, but maybe that's part of your tech stack or maybe you use a pro design tool, right? Depending what sort of resources you have. But you don't need all the things, but you need some way to create your marketing materials and then to push your marketing out. So maybe you have a schedule in tool, maybe you use the inbuilt meta system or maybe you have a third party platform. You don't need all the things, just look at having something so that you're not doing it manually. And I want to talk about automation and integration. And this is where your system start talking to each other. And honestly, this is one of the biggest opportunities I see for small business owners right now, because so much manual work is being done unnecessarily. Moving information from one platform to another, checking your statistics manually, updating spreadsheets manually, following up manually. Your time is too valuable for that. And automation is not about removing the human side of your business. It's about removing repetitive tasks that drain your energy and attention and that of your team and allowing AI or tech in some way to help you create those reports, update those spreadsheets. Do those competitor analysis? All that can be done now with technology. So look at what else can I automate? Where is something being done manually? That could be done by technology. And as I said, automation is not about removing the human side of your business, but you want the humans during the human work and you want tech doing what it can to leverage you. At her business, our year this year, we named the year of leverage. And I think technology needs to be viewed through that lens. Tech creates leverage when it saves you time. It creates consistency. It scales what's already working. It removes bottlenecks and it gives you more capacity back in your business. But tech works against leverage when you spend more time learning than executing or you get stuck because it's not your MO and so it never gets done. Or you duplicate efforts across disconnected tools or you maintain systems that no longer fit your business or you add complexity more steps instead of removing them. And so I'm inviting you to create a little tech order. This is something we've been doing not only from a cost cutting exercise, but from leveraging the team exercise. What are we doing that could be automated? Why do we or tech we're using that we're no longer using? Like you might have subscriptions to things that you are just no longer using. A video hosting tool, some sort of weird thing that was popular at some point. Just make sure you've got your tech stack supporting your business, not becoming a full-time job. So before we adopt any new technology, we're asking ourselves, number one, does this directly support a real business goal? Not, it looks interesting. Someone online said it changed their business. Does it actually support where you're wanting to go? Number two is, will it save time, or generate more revenue than it costs? And really considering that because you know 79 US a month here and 99 US a month there, you know at the time it doesn't seem very much, but it all adds up. So is it going to save you time? Now there's going to be a learning curve, there's going to be a set up, there's going to be integration and there's going to be energy required to do that, but once that's done is this tool generating more revenue. And that could be directly generating revenue or because it's creating so much more time and capacity, it allows you to do more income generating work. Does that make sense? And the third is, can my current systems already do this? Because sometimes we add another tool when really what we need is to make better use of what we already have. And it's probably a bonus question in there too. And that is, will I still be using this 12 months from now? Because not every exciting new platform deserves a permanent place in your business. Okay, so is this something that by business and where it's going in 12 months is still going to need? So give yourself a little tech audit and to answer the question, which is what technology do we use? I'm going to put a little wrap up here right now. Right, you don't need the most sophisticated tech stack. You need systems that support you in your business systems that help you see clearly into your business and to your customers and to your finances. Communicate clearly not only with your team, but those externally. Deliver consistently, market in a way that's sustainable and reclaim your time. That is the goal. Not more complexity, not more subscriptions, not more shiny objects. Just thoughtful systems and tech that create leverage for your business and allow you the space and time to build. So thank you for tuning in to this Ask Susie episode. If today's conversation resonated with you, I think you're going to love last week's episode with AI expert Jenna Hannan. It was one of the most fascinating conversations I've had in a long time. We talked about how business can actually, how your business can actually become visible inside AI platforms. And what I mean by that is when someone's searching inside of chat GPT or whatever tool they use, suggestions come up, who's the best hairdresser in Gleab and Sydney, who's the best marketing consultant in God'sford, whatever it is, how do you get your business to show up? And she shared really practical strategies for making sure that your business is the one that is recommended. And what I loved about what Jenna said was, it's like you're not competing with the big guys. You're really competing against yourself. And it calls for us to be more specific about who our ideal client is and what we stand for. So I'm going to link to that episode, which is episode 360 in the show notes for this episode, which is 361. Now you are going to find the show notes for today at herbusiness.com/361. That's herbusiness.com. forward slash 361. Now if this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me a message on Instagram. You'll find us at @herbusiness. You can share this episode with another woman business owner who might need this reminder today. And if you are new to the show, be sure to hit follow whatever the buttons say this day, follow, subscribe, whatever it is so that you get the next episode. And I'll see you next week right here on the Herbusiness Podcast. We have some great topics, some great interviews coming up. Thank you for listening. Bye for now.