Finally Turn the Chaos in Your Head into a Clear, Streamlined Operation

In this episode of The Systems Rehab Podcast, I’m diving into why strategy has to come before systems—especially for service providers. You can’t build effective systems if you haven’t mapped out where you’re headed. I’m breaking down how I guide my clients through strategic mapping sessions to uncover process gaps and create aligned, streamlined operations.

We’ll talk about more than just client management—I also touch on time management, onboarding your team the right way, and why your personal systems matter just as much as the ones you use in business.

If you're ready to stop throwing tools at the problem and get clear on how to run your business with intention, this one’s for you.

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About me: I'm Kenniqua Lewter, a Systems Strategist and HoneyBook Educator, and I help service providers organize and automate systems to simplify their business (and life) and confidently serve dream clients. 

Ready to finally streamline your service-based business with HoneyBook? Head over to yoursystemspro.com to get started. 

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Transcript

Kenniqua Lewter (00:00)
Okay, so one of my favorite things to do and to help service providers with is really to talk about strategy, the strategy behind your business, the strategy behind your client onboarding, your offboarding, your delivery, your project management. That's one of my favorite things to really help entrepreneurs with. So in today's episode of the Systems Rehab Podcast,

I'm gonna talk about what goes into our CEO system strategy sessions, just so you can get a full breakdown of everything that we do and cover and assist you with in those particular sessions. So if you're just tuning in, I am your host. I am Kenniqua Lewter I am a system strategist. I'm a HoneyBook educator. I'm based right here in Virginia.

And I help service providers organize and automate systems to help simplify their business and their life. So they can save 10 plus hours every single week. They can elevate their client experience and really serve their dream clients and do more of what it is that they love. so again, as I mentioned in this episode, we're going to talk about strategy here. And I think a lot of times what happens is as entrepreneurs, we want to go in

automatically start implementing systems into our business. But I think it's very important to understand that the strategy comes before implementing systems into the business, So let me give you an example as to why that would be the case. So let's say, for example, if I wanted to go through and lose 20 pounds and I'm like, okay, I need to go through and put some type of system in place.

to lose 20 pounds. I wouldn't be able to lose 20 pounds or to even put a system in place to try to lose the 20 pounds unless I first had the strategy. And so like in this example, the strategy portion of losing weight would be, I need to go through a meal prep per my body. I need to be in a deficit of 500 calories.

So this would put me at like 1700 calories every single day. I need to be able to have this amount of protein per day and blah, blah, right? That's the strategy behind actually going through and getting to said goal, which is losing the 20 pounds. And then the system would be the how you're going to go through and do that, So how you're going to go through and do it. So the strategy,

is pretty much the what and the why, what you're gonna do, why you wanna do it, and the systems are going to be the how you're going to achieve the goal. So these things, work beautifully together, but strategy normally has to come first, and then you implement the system. So in our CEO systems strategy session, it's really about taking all of the chaos that's going on in your head, all of these ideas, all of the

processes that you have in your head because you've been doing them for a while you just haven't put them down on paper or put it down on your computer or the more formal term is putting them in SOPs you're standing operating procedures you just have everything swimming around in your head and you're not really too sure about where it is that you're going you're just really stuck in the day-to-days and just basically just making it through

And so with our CEO system strategy, this is where you're taking all of that chaos that's going on in your head and we're creating a streamlined operation with what you have, And this is a three hour session. So you would sit down in one of our strategy sessions. We normally host these inside of zoom and we come together and we actually go through and map out

what you wanna work on, So there's a few things that we can work on during our strategy sessions. Most commonly, when clients come to me for our systems CEO strategy is most commonly for client management. This is going to be the onboarding, this is going to be communication, this is going to be offboarding. But there are other things that we could work together.

with doing our systems CEO strategy, So just imagine that if you had a place where you can come to say, hey, this is what I want to go through and achieve. How do I actually go through and achieve it? How do I?

actually make this come to fruition. And also too, because this is very important is one of the things is because a lot of times we don't know what we don't know and we don't think about what we just don't think about. If we don't know, we can't think about it, And so when we have these strategy sessions, this is the time where we map everything out. So literally we go through a full.

mapping journey of whatever said thing that you're doing. So let's say client management, like I said, is one of the most common, like onboarding will map out onboarding from the inquiry stage all the way through the off boarding stage, because this allows for us to dump everything that's in your head about your process. This is what happens. How does, how do people find you? Okay. They find you from here. Okay. What happens next? Okay. They do this. What, what do you do next?

And so we go through and we map this out, but when we map this out, I can then go through and I can see where the gaps are. I can see where the gaps are in your process. And I can see where there is room for opportunities, where there are inefficiencies. And then that's when I can make suggestions about, Hey, this is a tool maybe that we can use to.

automate this process because you're telling me right now you're doing this all manually or this is where we can go through and maybe we should add a step here, The client experience would be elevated if we were to add in an additional touch point. And so with us going through and mapping all of this out in a visual way, this allows for not only.

for me to be able to go through and see what your process is and how we can make it better and approve it. But it also allows for you to be able to see it. A lot of times when clients come to me and we do these mapping sessions and we do these not only for our system strategy, but we also do this anytime I'm doing any type of full implementation services for like our HoneyBook setups.

or when we're doing our CEO systems development, when we're doing full implementation services, we always do mapping because it's so easy to see where, like I said, those gaps are, but clients are always super impressed. Like they're like, no one's ever put this out like this before. And so,

What also happens during this session and why this session is so transformational for a lot of our clients, whether they're doing it just the session only, which is our three hours, or they're going through and they're actually doing implementation, which means they're doing a strategy session with me. And then I'm basically taking on the task of doing all of the steps there for them. But

The beauty of is that I, as a strategist, I am the person that's asking the hard questions. Like, why are, why are we doing this? And a lot of the times it's not me asking questions to quote unquote question your process or what it is that you're doing is that if I can understand the logic as to why you're doing this.

then we can see where it can maybe be improved or maybe I can give an alternative. So let me give you an example. Like I've had a client in the past that has a photography business. And one of the things that we did with our mapping session again, as we mapped out all of the processes and one of the things that, the client advised is, Hey, you know, they, the, the leads that want to book services with me.

they don't, they don't pay any type of deposit. I go through, I give them all my calendar and then I show up to the shoot X, Y, Z, and then I invoice them after that event. And so one of my questions obviously is why, why are we doing it this particular way? Not because

It's not because that way is wrong. It's the way that this client was going through and during the process, but just going through and shedding just a little bit of light and a little bit of perspective. Just to ask the question of, well, let me ask you why the client doesn't pay a deposit. And so this opened up the reason why.

Well, the client doesn't pay a deposit because sometimes I find that the event goes over. And so when it goes over, I'm then having to go through and bill the client for overages. Okay. That makes sense. Some of your clients go over, but when we're going through and we're mapping out our client journeys, basically what we're doing is we're mapping out in essence,

the best case scenario in most cases. Now there's our initial timeline, our initial string of our client journey is the best case scenario and ideally where we want our client to go from the beginning to the end. And this is the path that we want them to travel. So in our first string of our client journey, if that's our best case scenario, then we ultimately want that client

to not go over their time, Because it's not built in for them to go over their time. Now, yes, you have them where they're paying an additional fee for going over, but ideally, it's not the best thing for the client to go over their time. That's not the ideal. So when we're going through and we're mapping out the client journey on our main line of our client journey,

This is where we want them to go through And so being that is ultimately our clients should pay a deposit. They should pay a deposit because then we're expecting that when that event is over, that everything is taken care of. We're expecting that they don't go over because most of the time,

We don't want them to go over. Now, will we bill them for overages? Absolutely. So what we were able to do during this strategy session is to say, okay, let's go through and just rethink this because we want to create a best case scenario for not only for you, but also for your clients as well. And so what we were able to do is, okay, yes, let's go ahead and put a deposit

on the booking, So they cannot book without paying a deposit. And the reason for that is because they're booking time on your calendar. And so what if they book time and they don't show up? That was money lost because someone else who was willing to pay might have wanted to book that particular spot.

And then another thing that we added was instead of waiting to bill to after the event or after the shoot was done, let's bill for this project. Let's bill a week ahead. Let's build a week before the event happens. That way there's no money talk at the shoot. Everything has been taken care of. All you have to do is show up. All they have to do is show up and that's good.

And if there are any overages, then we can bill for overages of time after the shoot. We can let them know, hey, there was a little bit of overage, hour or two per contract, this is what the overages is, and then send the contract, and then, hey, it's due in two to three days or whatever, whatever type of timeframe,

but then that's what we were able to go through and build. So as we're going through, we're working through the strategy, we're being able to go through and say, okay, let's go through and say, let's do this because this is going to be the best case scenario for this. But then also too, we can look through and see where the gaps are, As I explained, we can go through and we can see the gaps because we'll be able to go through and say, okay, I think that we need to add some follow-ups

into this this this workflow. And again, that's really just for an example. If we're going through and doing like our client management on boarding with our strategy sessions, which is also good is because again, this is where you can go through and you can bring your ideas where we sit down for three hours and we map everything out.

this is where too we have our clients go through even before booking the service with us. Like you'll go through and we have this intake form which gives us everything that we need to know about your business. We ask you pain points and what are some bottlenecks that are happening or going on in your business currently at this time. And this allows for us to be able to say, okay, I think that, and of course we take your input about what topic you wanna talk about during the strategy session.

And we do that, but based off your bottlenecks too, because what I have found is that clients, again, and we all don't know what we don't know. And so sometimes we might think that one area is the problem when it's actually another area. So with our intake form, we allow for you to say, okay, this is the area that I believe that I need help with, which is fine.

but also to the questions that we have on the intake form will let us know more information to figure out is that really truly the problem or is there a greater problem above that one? Okay, because sometimes there are certain issues that is like, okay, we're talking about maybe you're saying, I'm having a problem with team, team onboarding, but then there's no SOPs, right?

business admin back end type of stuff. So is your problem really with the team or is it really with the business admin type of stuff with your SOPs, And so that's where we go through and we figure that out.

So there's a couple of areas that you can cover during this session, which is gonna be like I explained before, it's client management, which is typically gonna be your onboarding, your communication, your offboarding. Another one is going to be project management. So if there are issues that you feel that you're really struggling in managing the projects that you're coming along with, whether that's for task tracking, that's your timelines, your status updates to your clients,

That is something that we can handle during these sessions. We also cover time and calendar management. So for example, time and calendar management. For example, this is going to cover your capacity planning, time blocking, recurring routines, things like that, right?

I have a client where we were going through, we were doing a coaching call and this client also works with me with their HoneyBook account, which they work with me on a monthly basis for monthly coaching with HoneyBook. So it's kind of strategy, HoneyBook booked in together. But for example, we were going through during a coaching call.

and she was sharing about her scheduler. So we brought up her scheduler inside of HoneyBook, and then she was asking me a question about it. I don't even necessarily remember exactly what the question was, but then I noticed on her scheduler that she had every day available for a meeting. So it was Monday through Friday from like nine to eight p.m. that she was available for a meeting. And so I just...

the question because again, I'm the person that I want to ask because sometimes there's a really good reason as to why you may be doing something, You've asked me a question about, no, the reason why I did this is X, Y, Z. So I never assume why someone's doing it. I'm just going to ask why so I can get an understanding.

And so I asked her when I saw that I'm like, can I ask you a question? Why do you have your openings for your calendar between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday through Friday? And so she just simply explained to me, well, I just want to be sure that I'm available whenever someone is needing to book an appointment with me.

And I say, yeah, no, I totally, I totally get that, I totally get you want to be available and you want to have enough availability for your leads and your clients to be able to book meetings with you. said, but what I would recommend is, and again, this kind of goes into time and calendar management system is to choose a couple of days a week for which you're going to have meetings. And the reason why ideally,

It sounds great to just have meetings, to have all these openings all the times, all week long, But as service providers, our business is not just being in meetings, That is a part of our business. This is things that we have to do in order to be able to get leads. This is how we communicate with our clients, but our sole work.

is not just being on meetings and being on Zoom all day. And so that context switching from you're doing your work. So let's say you're a website designer, right? I'm just going to say that you're a website designer and you're trying to design a website. And this is a Monday morning. And then next thing you know, in the afternoon, boom, you have to jump on another meeting. And then Tuesday, you're on another meeting. And then Wednesday night, you're on another meeting.

all of this context switching between these different tasks that you're doing and this different types of, I guess like energy really, that you're putting out there, it doesn't allow for you to be the most productive. And so that's something that we do cover during the session if that's one of your primary areas where you're like, I'm really struggling with how to really try to manage my time.

and to manage my calendar. So what I suggested to her was, hey, let's go ahead and choose two days. And I see this so many times, like for me and myself, is, well, me and myself, for me, it is Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays for me are my days where I'm gonna have meetings. This is gonna be the days that I also film content. Like I'm filming this video podcast right now.

This is when I'm going to do that during this particular time, because I can actually be ready to do this. So I can be ready to film, show up, go live. And then if I do meetings, I'm still in that same energy because I know that Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to be on, I have to be on, but Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, those days are different flows for me, And so that's what I recommended her to do as well as

put breaks into her calendar, into her schedule. Like, so for example, on my calendar, there's breaks where 1 PM every single day, 1 to 2 PM is blocked off where no one could go through and book a meeting with me on any of that time is blocked off period for any type of activity. Like it really has to be very important for me to like, okay, I'm going to do something at 1 PM because 1 PM is typically my lunchtime. I booked that out to say this is when I'm going to take lunch.

and I tried to be very mindful of stopping and taking lunch. And I wasn't always mindful of stopping taking lunch. Like I was a person that would sit at my desk and I would sit here and I could work, work, work, work, work. Because one thing about me, I have no problem doing long stints of work like at my desk. Like I can do four or five hours at one time and be good. Like...

I used to try kind of getting off a tangent really quickly, but I used to try to do like the Pomodoro method of doing 25 minutes on five minute breaks. I don't necessarily need a break. don't, can go, okay? I can go. So having those breaks put in is definitely good. But another thing that we do cover is team onboarding and offboarding. So if you have a team and you're needing to have something in place for onboarding, offboarding, if that's something that you're struggling with, we do cover that.

Business Admin, which I talked about before, which Business Admin is going to be like your backend organization. So this could be like your digital management, how you're going through and managing your files. This can also be your SOPs, like your standard operating procedures. Do you have standard operating procedures in place? Where are those standard operating procedures? Like are they?

very easy to find or very easy to edit or things like that. And also too, having a business hub, where everything is, where everything for your business is. that live in Google Drive? Does that live in Notion? Where is that? And so those are things that we talk about during the strategy session. And I actually give you a strategy, but actual actionable steps that you can take after our session as well.

And another thing too, I recently started to throw in was personal systems management because what I found, so I do work with, obviously I work with a lot of service providers, so that's your VA's, your online business managers, your photographers, your event decorators, your coaches, Like I work with so many different service providers, but some service providers that I work with is that they don't have a team, they are just them.

A lot of people that I work with there is just them. Like I just have like mostly just a contractor here and there that I may outsource to. And we are going to attempt to build an agency here in the future. I talked about this on another podcast, but that too, but.

Personal systems are very important because your personal systems really intertwined with your work, especially if you are a solopreneur. So we talk about the personal systems with your personal routines, your habits, your calendar, your home life workflows, because all of those have a lot to do with how you go through and how you show up and how you're able to operate and show up for not only yourself, but for your business and for your family, for your friends.

and for your clients So that's really what we cover in our CEO system strategy So if you're a service provider,

If you're stuck in a reactive mode and you want to lead your business more proactively, meaning that when you start your day, you're really just responding to just everything that pops up. Instead of operating your day with a flow that you already know what to do and everything is planned when you're going to go through and do it. If you're already going through and you're already booking clients,

but your backend just hasn't caught up. I'm gonna be talking about in future episodes about how your systems are ever changing. Like your systems, once you get your onboarding system done, like this summer, right? You get your onboarding system done this summer, it's not gonna stay the same when you go into the fall. Like I'm literally gonna be sharing with you guys how I'm gonna be changing all my systems just for that mere fact of that.

So it's not gonna be able to go through in the same. And then sometimes even too, again, just kind of keeping up. The more clients that you get, the more things kind of start to break down if you don't have a solid system in place or you don't have a system in place that is geared for you to be able to go through and grow your business.

This is also going to be for you if you're ready to move from doing everything messy and you're doing everything manual in your business and you're ready to go through and step into a more organized, automated, streamlined business, then the CEO system strategy is going to be for you as well because again, we're taking everything out of your head.

And we're using my brain to put a strategy in place for your business. And we're having a roadmap design uniquely for your business and for your business needs. That's going to work with you where you'll have that roadmap to be able to go through and implement the things that you need to implement to be able to streamline your business. And then also if you just want expert eyes on your business to see again where the

inefficiencies are, where are the gaps? Where can you be making a little bit more improvement? Where are you actually doing very well in? Sometimes we think about that this is all about the what you're not doing and what you're doing wrong. I have plenty of clients that come to me and there are so many things that they are doing right, They are doing right because they are getting clients. And so there are so many things that they are doing right that it's like, hey,

Double down on that. I had a client that was going through that was, in the event space and she was getting so many leads into her business. And I'm sitting here telling her like, Hey, double down on what you're doing there because you're getting so many leads. You're getting so many leads. I know that out of all these leads that you have, I know it would be easy for you to close like 15 of these leads just this summer. I know that you can, if you have the capacity to be able to take on this amount.

you can close out 15 out of the amount of leads that you have. So you're doing great in this area and to keep going and honing down on this particular tactic, So this isn't just about, you're doing this wrong. You could do this better. Like we can all do things better in my business or in your business and my business too, because there's things that I'm working on. I'm gonna be sharing with you guys too, taking you behind the scenes of what I'm working on. But there are always things that we could do better, but there are some things that you know, you are really, really, really good at.

All right, so that was really my breakdown of the CEO system strategy. If you know that the CEO strategy is something that is for you, I'm going to put a link in the description box below so you can go ahead and you can book your three hour time with me and definitely get onto that calendar because I don't have that many slots that I have available every single month again, because I only do meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I don't have a lot of slots available, but

Again, just recap of what you get with the systems CEO CEO system strategy is a three hour strategy session with me and zoom face to face and zoom. This session is also recorded. So you do you will get the recording of this session. There is a pre assessment that you go through that way I can go through and I can assess.

the bottlenecks in your business and I can come prepared with insight. And so you bring yourself, you bring your bottlenecks and your issues and we go through, we hash it out on the strategy session. I also do provide you with tailored recommendations and the right tools and softwares that you can use for your business. So you're not wasting your time trying to go through and just test everything.

And though you know that I am just a honey book lover over here, sometimes honey book may not be the suggestion for you. Maybe it's not something that you need in your stage of business. Maybe in your stage of business, you might not be there yet. You might be where it's like, Hey honey, just use a spreadsheet for right now, or

may it might be use something like high level because girl you got it going on right and so I'm going to give you the tool recommendation that is best for you not best off of what I just like but best what I know that would be the best option and tool for you and for your business and then again you'll also get a step-by-step roadmap for implementation so you know exactly what to do

next and you'll receive a full little kit of a custom strategy after 72 hours of our CEO system strategy. So I hope you found this information so helpful so you know the resources that are here that are available to you to really help you to be able to organize, automate and streamline your business so you can simplify your business and start growing the business that your future self will love again.

Go ahead and make sure that you give this video a like if you're watching on video. If you're not, go ahead and subscribe to the Kenniqua Lewter YouTube channel because I am going to be posting more videos there every single week. And I'm going to be going live on YouTube every single week. It's going to be like our lunch break hour of behind the scenes. So.

I am going to be going through and answering questions. I'm gonna be going behind the scenes of my business and having casual conversations. And I want it to be like a lunch thing where we're gonna get it done in 30 minutes or less. That way, everyone, mostly everyone takes a lunch around 12 o'clock-ish, 12 o'clock Eastern, that you will be able to go through and consume the content and come hang out with me and again, and ask your questions.

And hopefully we can build just a community just going through and streaming on the YouTube channel. So definitely if you're not watching there, go ahead, head on over, subscribe. let me know in the comments one thing that is holding you back from being the best version of yourself this year. And I will read and respond back to each and every one of those comments.

And thank you again for tuning in to the Systems Rehab Podcast. Again, let's go. Bye.