Operational Efficiency 101: Make Your Business Run Without You With Automations And Systems With Emily Hatton

What if your business could run without you? Operational efficiency (aka creating systems, automations and hiring a VA) might just be the secret weapon that frees your time, scales your growth, and brings back your sanity in your online business.

In this episode of The Remote CEO Life, I chat with business operations expert Emily Hatton to explore how online business owners can create operational efficiency through smart automation and systems. We talk about real founder mistakes when hiring a VA, systems that save hours, and the mindset shifts needed to finally step away from the day-to-day chaos.

You’ll learn:

- The difference between being busy and being effective
- Why automating your business is non-negotiable for growth
- How to create systems that support your freedom
- The most common bottlenecks in business operations
- When and what to delegate when hiring a VA (and when not to)

If you're ready to achieve operational efficiency in your online business, automate the right tasks, and run a business that doesn't run you, this episode is a must-listen.

Follow Emily on Instagram @emilyhattonbusiness and @femalefounderspace

LinkedIn: Emily Hatton

#operationalefficiency #automation #businessoperations #systemization #delegation #hireavirtualassistant #onlinebusiness #freedomfocused

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Business Operations Consulting
• 3:50 The Importance of Operations in Business
• 6:55 Recognizing Operational Challenges
• 9:45 Delegating and Outsourcing Effectively
• 12:37 Finding the Right Balance in Operations
• 16:34 Identifying Warning Signs of Operational Issues
• 19:23 Automation and Systemization Strategies
• 22:22 Implementing AI in Business Operations
• 25:30 Building a Community for Female Founders
• 28:19 Staying True to Your Business Purpose
• 31:18 Actionable Steps for Operational Improvement
• 34:06 Defining Freedom in Business
• 40:29 Finding Freedom in Business
• 41:23 The Importance of Automation and Systemization

Transcript

Sophie Biggerstaff (00:00)
Do you run your business or does your business run you? This is a question I constantly ask myself and my coaching clients in my own personal quest to find freedom in my business and life. Over the past year, I spent a lot of time automating and systemizing my own business and supporting clients do the same in theirs. So today I'm excited to chat about this subject on the Remote CEO Life podcast. And my guest today is business operations consultant, Emily Hatton.

She helps women build smart systems, strong teams that allow founders to scale businesses with intention by setting them up for operational efficiency. She's also the founder of the Female Founder Space, a community for women building businesses, and she's a big advocate for getting off the hamster wheel of hustle and replacing chaos with clarity so you can scale your revenue and still own your time. So today we're talking about the reasons why you should automate and systemize your business and some practical tips to get you started.

If your business is in chaos right now, this is definitely an episode not to miss. So let's get into the conversation.

Sophie Biggerstaff (00:57)
Excited to chat about this topic because it is very much on brand for me to talk about how we built these businesses that sometimes give us like a trap rather than an actual nice life. So I definitely want to dig into this subject. Can you tell us a little bit more about you first of all and a little bit more about how you've kind of got to where you are today, which is kind of doing business operations consulting.

Emily (01:24)
Yeah. So I'm ⁓ my main job as a business operations consultant. So leading up to this my whole career, I've done quite a variety of different things. So I worked as a project manager as a business analyst ⁓ in HR, I also have a finance background. And then what I didn't realize when I was working through all these things is it led up to a good being a good operations person because you need quite a mix of experience.

And then I moved to Malta 10 years ago and I started working bit more in direct operational roles. So was working with small businesses, ⁓ helping with their operations. So I worked with an architect, I worked with ⁓ a and wellness brand, and then I worked in the tourism industry. And then COVID hit and the tourism industry kind of went.

downhill. then I moved into the marketing industry and became a head of operations with a marketing agency. ⁓ We really scaled the agency. It was remote first, a great agency to work with. And we scaled it hugely over four years. And after that experience, it was good, but the agency was a bit big for my liking. So I decided to become a business operations consultant, because I enjoyed working with kind of smaller

agencies and going on that growth journey. And then part of that as well is that I found a real alliance with kind of female founders. And I also started a female founder community to help other female founders with how to build successful businesses because I've learned a lot along the way.

Sophie Biggerstaff (03:11)
Yeah, definitely. And what made you kind of focus specifically on the operations side? Because you've obviously got that really diverse range of background. Like, why did you specifically choose that to kind of go into with your own business?

Emily (03:26)
So I think because of my wide background really, so I think I like doing different things and operations is a mix of different things. I think particularly with my project management and business analysis background that leads really well into operations because it's thinking about processes and how to do them better. And it's also thinking how to implement that. So those two bits of experience in particular really helped with

moving into an operational role. And operations means different things to different people, but basically it's supporting the kind of the structure of an organization, big or small, and just helping it run more effectively. And that takes quite a lot of kind of problem solving and knowledge of different areas and how things interact. So I just felt like all my experience led to me being really strong in operations, basically.

Sophie Biggerstaff (04:26)
Yeah, it definitely sounds like it. I mean, operations, so many people kind of, when they start a business, it's the least of their problems, right? Like thinking about how to systemize things, automate, manage things behind the scenes. I would look at that as it's your foundations. Like it's literally the foundations of your business. If you want to build a scalable business, you have to have a really strong backbone. And I think the operational side of it is the backbone.

For me, I've always kind of thought about it as if like, if you build a house without the foundations of the house, the house is gonna fall down. If you build a business without the foundations and all the structures and the strategies and the processes, that is also gonna collapse at some point when it grows too big, right? So it might be fine at those early stages. And what I personally have found throughout my time coaching is that people come to me, either right at the beginning when they need to set everything up or...

about a year or two in because they've realised they've built this business that they don't know how to now manage because it's kind of wobbling, it's kind of cracking, like things aren't like as they once were when they were smaller so as they grow they're just building themselves a beast but the beast isn't contained so how how did you learn how to kind of manage the beast basically like how did you how do people

kind of ⁓ put the foundations in place so that they are not building themselves this like crazy beast that gets out of control and they're building something that's really like structured, strategic and manageable.

Emily (06:03)
I think there needs to be a balance because I think it's also important not to get bogged down in too much process. And people tend to overcorrect. So I think when people feel like there's issues or they feel like there's not enough structure to the business, I'm sure that everyone building a business feels like that at a variety of stages, either because the business has grown, you've taken on team members, there'll be things that kind of give those push points that

means you should be looking at your operational structure. For CEOs, it isn't generally their strength to think about the operational ⁓ side of things because CEOs are generally like visionaries. They're really good at coming up with ideas and ⁓ engaging with people and getting people excited about ideas. not so

good in general at kind of putting those things in place and putting the structure in place, which allows for those things to succeed. So I think it's important as a CEO, or as a founder to understand your strengths and weaknesses. So it's good to understand whether you are good and you are interested in those things or not. If you're not, it's probably good to get someone in the business who is good.

with those things. And usually CEOs, for example, for their first hire, they look at a VA or someone to help with those processes. But usually, actually, really, the first gap is like a mini ops person, because it's usually that a CEO is seeing small things that aren't working as they're growing. So they need someone to kind of solve them for them. Some of it is kind of task, but some of it is like, okay,

you know, I've got all my time blocked out in meetings, I haven't got any time to think about marketing, think about sales, and they need someone to set up some processes or to think through some processes to make that more efficient. ⁓ So I think it's either to get someone to help, that's an ideal scenario doesn't have to be a huge full time hire, but to have someone who's got the mindset that you don't is really helpful to move your business forward. ⁓

And also to look at what really matters for your business to move forward. So don't get bogged down in lots of SOPs and documenting stuff that no one's going to read. That tends to what people do when people panic about processes. It's important to think what are three things that I think are being done really efficiently right now? How can I tackle them? Do I have?

system that tackles that. No, shall I find one? Yes. And then just go through it kind of methodically. And if you tackle the ones that are the biggest issues every week or every month, you will see improvement in how you're doing things. And often these things are quite small to solve. So it could be something like arranging meetings is taking ages. Okay, maybe there's a calendar or something that I should start using for that tick. And that saved me half an hour this week.

So there's often small things that you can just note down that are inefficient and you're noticing. then there's, if you put into Google or chat GBT, you can solve them.

Sophie Biggerstaff (09:35)
Yeah, no, I fully agree with you. I think from my personal experience, founders are either really creative or really commercial and logical and analytical. And it is rare to find a combination of the two, but annoyingly, you kind of need the combination of the two in business. I'm quite lucky in the sense that I do actually have both sides. So for me, it's quite easy to be very analytical, but also come up with loads of ideas and be in ideas. One thing I'm not is creative.

Emily (09:51)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (10:02)
So any of the creative tasks, that is definitely something that I outsource. I can be really like create the idea, the concept, but execution of the creation, not my thing. So I have worked with so many different founders that have got one of those skills. So usually they come to me if they're a more visionary person, because then I can help them bring in that strategy piece. But one thing that I definitely did wrong at the beginning of my own entrepreneurial journey was

Emily (10:23)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (10:30)
bring people into my business. Because I always knew I needed people to help me. I've had someone working for me since day one, like five years ago, from the very beginning. And I bought on, obviously outsourced the things that I wasn't particularly good at, which is the creation of social media posts and things like that. But what I didn't do was give any SOP or guidelines and...

then I would be disappointed in their work because what they produced doesn't match my vision or my expectations because they have nothing to work to. Of course they didn't, it didn't match. So one thing that I think I see as a massive opportunity and you can tell me your thoughts on this for business operations is to make sure that somebody can articulate their vision. If they're going to bring other people into their business or they're going to have processes and structures.

I feel like the S you mentioned S O P's earlier, which is standard operating procedures. I feel like somebody needs to kind of almost be able to articulate that standard operating procedure before they take, give over that task to a VA or a social media manager, for example, because otherwise that person, setting that person up to fail, I guess, because they don't really have the guideline. So how do you manage that in those situations where maybe that person is so creative, they don't really understand the process.

themselves so how do they then pass that over to somebody else?

Emily (11:50)
think that there's a kind of two ways that you can delegate or outsource stuff. And it depends at what level you're doing that. So for example, you might hand over email marketing to someone fully. So you might bring in the email marketing expert. And what you actually should give them is not SOPs of like how to write emails and things like that. You should be saying what I expect is

these kind of results, like I'm looking for a 20 % open rate and 3 % click through rate. And I want you to send a weekly newsletter and whatever update a flow a month. So you give them the parameters to do their role if they're an expert and then you give them the freedom on how they do that. So you don't mind.

what is involved in those emails. If you do mind, you give them some guidelines. You might give them like, obviously tone of voice guidelines, you know, what the calls to action needs to be in the emails. If you've got a preference in timelines, you give them the information they need, but the exact parameters of how they do it. If you're paying an expert should be up to them. And then there's the difference between that and like an entry level.

role or a more junior role is that you likely will need to put more time into it yourself in terms of documenting exactly what they need to do step by step so that you're getting the output that you need. either you can do that from like, you know, just recording when you next do it and using a tool to turn that into an SOP. So there's quite straightforward ways that you can do that yourself if there's a task that you've previously done.

But the best thing is if you have quite high expectations of someone, it's better to pace on a bit more and give them a higher level of ownership on the output, particularly in that area that you mentioned about not knowing how to do creative. I've got exactly the same problem. It's the first thing that I outsource, is social media, content creation. And all I'm interested in is the performance on Instagram.

don't care about what's being produced on that. just say, this is coming up next week. This is like what I want to focus on this month. And I leave the creative stuff totally up to them because I'm not good at it. Whereas if I was good at it and I wanted someone to do it my way, I would document step by step like this is how this is how I would do this reel. This is what I would like you to do. So you have kind of two choices there, I think.

Sophie Biggerstaff (14:29)
Yeah, that makes sense. think, yeah, sometimes you have to pay a little bit more to obviously get what you want. I think one big mistake that a lot of founders make is that they expect like a virtual assistant to come in and just take over all of these jobs. And obviously when you're a new business, I know you don't generally have a lot of budget. Usually some people do if they've got investment in their business. But from experience of the businesses that I've worked with, none of them have really started with a lot of money.

Emily (14:57)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (14:57)
and

they're really cautious about where they spend that. So naturally they see more value in trying to squeeze a lot out of someone for a low cost than pay one person to do one thing. And I get that mindset, but there is a lot of detriments that come with that approach. And I think going down the route that you've just mentioned around like really hiring an expert and trusting them to run with it and do their job is what really drives growth in a business. And it takes,

usually takes people quite a long time and a lot of failure to realise that unfortunately. ⁓ But there is a reason why people say it. I've done the same thing myself. I've also gone through that whole process, that whole cycle and come to the conclusion that usually if you pay someone little money you don't get the results that you want. On that that's a generalisation but in general that's been my personal experience with it. ⁓ But what I

What I also think with like operations is that we can, like you said earlier, it's a balance right between between the two sides, like the organizational side and then obviously like the move the business forward side, you kind of need both. What are some examples of like warning signs that founders should look out for that they don't have that healthy balance between the two and they probably do need a little bit more focus?

on that operational side because maybe it's actually not allowing them to grow any further than where they've already got to.

Emily (16:26)
You'll generally say I think in your like, probably you'll know because you'll feel it you'll feel like pains with what you're doing. So you won't feel like your job as CEO is easy because you'll notice things day after day that are difficult to do. Or you think aren't running efficiently. So there's that kind of gut feel thing which is

one area and you do have to listen to that if something doesn't feel easy, it probably isn't. So it means that something needs addressing but how to do that more like in a more structured way is if you are keeping an eye on your business metrics, you'll probably see them stall at certain levels. So you'll see them stall like revenue will stall, profit will like go down likely because you're wasting time on

things that aren't a good use of your time. But generally, it's that revenue stores when things when you can do things better, which means that there's some operational issues. So it means that either you're unable to grow because you can't make enough sales because you're taking too much time on things that aren't a good use of your time, in which case you might want to look at getting someone else in to do those things. Or there's

ways to automate a lot of things as well. So at the moment, there's a huge gap that people aren't looking at, which is like, if you are full at this point, if you're at capacity and you're making say, 10k is your top capacity, and that means that you're full, you can probably optimize that another two to three k just by automating things in your processes.

without getting someone else in. And then the next layer of growth would be to get someone else in to do some things so that you can move it up again. But where you're maxed out, there will be things where you feel maxed out and you don't think I can take on more clients or I can take on more customers with the current setup. You need to look at, there will definitely be things in all of your millions of systems that you use and processes that you do that could be optimized and changed.

so that you can maximize that a bit more and then you can look at next steps after that. So you'll get these pinch points and it'll be different depending on your exact business, but you will see the same pinch points as you move up with growth.

Sophie Biggerstaff (18:59)
Absolutely. I spent the past year, more or less, automating and systemizing my entire business. And I would say like it's 75 % automated. Like even this podcast process that I have post-us recording this, it's all systemized. Like I know exactly what I need to do next. And it's a lot of it is automated. A lot of it is used with AI. There's, it only takes me probably about another hour on top of our recording time to edit a video. Whereas before, when it wasn't that process, it would take me like half the day.

So there's a lot of time back when you add in systems. Yeah, I'm not saying it doesn't take a lot of time to implement the systems. It does sometimes unless you're paying an expert to do it for you. ⁓ I personally like to learn myself so that I can then hand it over to somebody else. So I've implemented most of my systems, but luckily, like one of my business partners in another business is actually an operations business manager. So I have had a little bit of support in terms of like how to write good SIPs and pass that over to my VA, for example.

Emily (19:40)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (19:56)
I've been quite lucky with that, but I totally see the value in automating and systemizing as much of your business as you can. And then obviously then you'd outsource if you are still at your full capacity. So what kind of things do you see most people systemating and automizing that somebody could jump in on right now and start doing in their business?

Emily (20:18)
I think some basic things like...

like calls, like booking calls, like the whole call, notes, actions process. so kind of a basic workflow ⁓ is, I mean, to speed up booking a call, you should use a call booking thing. So people book into your calendar if people aren't doing that. And then on a call, you should have an AI note taker taking notes. That then creates your notes.

for you and creates an action list for you. You can then have an automation set up to draft an email to go to a client with those notes so that as a follow up to the call, that's already done as a process and you can just amend it slightly and send it. saves time of putting together for email and also an automation to turn those actions into tasks in a project management system.

for example, and put dates on them. So you can automate. Some businesses have back-to-back calls during the day. So if you can automate some of the admin, that people often spend 15, 20 minutes after the call, like tidying up, that can save you a couple of hours a day, especially across a bigger team. If you have multiple people on calls, it can be big saving.

Sophie Biggerstaff (21:43)
Yeah, definitely. think it's all about time saving, right? Like that's, that's the biggest thing. Like when you run a business, it never feels like you have enough time to do all the things, particularly if you're in a growth or scaling phase, then it's really important to get some of those hours back. And that's exactly when you need to start automating and that they're really basic things. Some of the things that you've mentioned, like around like the calendar piece. So that's so easy for somebody to set up. But I did a coaching session recently with someone that

was a therapist slash coach and she didn't have that set up and she was having to manually do all of that and I was like, well, that's the first thing that we need to fix because that was the biggest pain point in our business going back to what you said around recognising the signs of when you need to start automating things. It's when you're starting to feel disgruntled and annoyed by something that constantly goes wrong. And I think a lot of people just don't realise that they can change that and they're just like, wow, this is just how it is. But no, actually you can.

Emily (22:17)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (22:36)
put these processes in place, you can systemize things, you can automate things. But I think there's a big resistance around it because it means learning something new quite often. So that's a little bit intimidating for a lot of people.

Emily (22:44)
Yeah.

But I think I'm always always if something's annoying to do, like, it's good to kind of think about your activities and rate them. So if it's annoying, and if it's boring, there's usually like a way to automate it. Like always, there will be a way to automate that. And it's just thinking not only about time, but also about the value in the task you're doing. Is it good use of you as running a business be like

spending 15 minutes writing up notes and drafting an email. No, your time should be spent more on strategy and think about what to do next in the business. it's time in itself, but it's also the value of the task that you're spending your time on. And if you were really critical about it, like you wouldn't want to pay yourself to do that. If you have a, it's good to have kind of an hourly rate in mind for yourself.

and then look at the task that you're doing and say, is this worth how much I should be paying myself? So usually things like delivery are worth that much because that's what you charge out to people. And if you look at your other time versus the rate that you would charge, if that task is not worth that amount, you should look at how to automate it or to outsource it.

Sophie Biggerstaff (24:03)
Yeah, definitely. I think you just burn yourself out if you don't. So it's really easy to go into burnout just from managing all of these tasks. So again, highlights the importance of implementing them. And I know that you've got something called the anti-hustle operating system. So tell us a little bit about that. What does that mean?

Emily (24:08)
Yeah.

So, it's using AI basically. I've got kind of two levels of operating systems. So what I found with a lot of founders that I was working with in marketing agencies, but also wider is that they had on their goals to use AI more and it just stayed on their goal list forever. So, you know, for the past one to two years since

people talk more about AI, founders put it on their tools and say, yeah, I'm to do more with that, great, I'm just going to solve that. And it just never moves. So I was having the same problem is that we would put a tool in place with a team and no one will be that interested or people will kind of half use it and then we wouldn't get the benefits from it. So I came up with a way to solve it, which is

by putting together an operating system to actually put some structure around implementing tools, like AI-based tools in this case. And what it's based on is analyzing your processes. So using prompts to analyze your processes and see where the current problems are so that you're not looking at it too often. So you're not like, hey, there's this cool tool that makes designs. Let's just use that.

you're actually looking at the other end around, you're saying, okay, what are the problems in my business? So what do I need to be solving first? So it's doing analysis on where you should be getting efficiencies. And then, and then putting in place a framework to actually implement those and analyze the efficiencies that you're getting on them. So seeing how much time you're saving by implementing that tool. And if you're not saving time, why?

So is it because it's not been implemented well, the team don't know how to use it, you don't know how to use it, or it's the wrong tool. So there's a few options why it could not be working. But by seeing the efficiencies and doing the full kind of cycle of an operating system and actually looking at the benefits you're gaining, it allows you to implement and build on that more and more because you do it properly, you do the full cycle rather than just shoving a tool.

that you buy and hardly use, or you give to a team and they don't really use. You do follow-ups and make sure that the people who are invested in making sure those tools are successful, whether that's you or whether that's your team, do it. Do the cycle and see the efficiencies. And you can see from the analysis at the start, you see how much money you should save by doing that process. And obviously that gives you bit of motivation to do it.

Sophie Biggerstaff (27:12)
Yeah, that makes sense. That's really, yeah, I think AI is amazing for automating and analyzing and reflecting back to you exactly what you need to do. And there's so many more things that you can obviously implement with AI to actually automate and systemize things as well. Like I use it so much in my process, like this whole podcast is edited by AI. My show notes are written by AI with, I've got a, I've created quite a lot of custom GPTs to create all of my ⁓ different.

Emily (27:38)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (27:41)
different material and it literally sounds just like me now. So that's great. so I think, I think there's so much, what's the word, ⁓ misinterpretation of how to use AI efficiently and properly. And like, think what you've just described there around, like analyze and is one of the easiest ways you can use it without it really, ⁓ changing, changing anything drastic in your business or what you're, what you're doing. It's actually just going to reflect back to you where the gaps are and how you can.

Emily (27:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (28:10)
improve that so that's a effective way to use it I think. ⁓ And I know you also run a community of female founders so tell us a little bit about that as well I'm very interested to hear about it.

Emily (28:22)
Yeah, so I started it at start of this year. And it was because I was having a lot of conversations with female founders, and I realized some of the things we've heard about. So a lot of ⁓ founders are visionaries, especially female founders who run kind of like creative and consulting services. And what I found from having conversations

with them is just that I could give them quite small insights that would really help them with their businesses and just like different perspectives on how to do things differently and how to run their business more like a business rather than kind of a lifestyle thing. And I think I just wanted to build something where I could kind of do that on a wider scale. Cause I thought even small things that I've learned as an operational person really help people who don't have an operations person.

that they can pay at the moment. So they're kind of too small for that stage. so I start the community and we have conversations and it's very much focused on building a business. So it's focused on ⁓ like the full, all areas you need to build a business. So business development, marketing, sales, finance, ⁓ people, automation, like so the kind of ⁓ full circle of things you need to run a business.

⁓ And we share kind of successes, we set ourselves many goals every week to make sure that we are moving forward. And I do weekly workshops from experts that come in and talk about specific subjects. So for example, today we've got one that's on how to PR yourself. So people learn a bit more about PR and why it's important and what you can do for yourself ⁓ to explore the option obviously.

And then maybe when you're when you're growing a business a bit more, can pay an expert to do it. But what you can actually do to get things started quite easily yourself. So we do a weekly workshop on something that is useful for especially like solo business founders or small team founders to help them get wider knowledge on how to build their business. So it's a bit about motivation and

providing people extra insights that they might not see, like working by themselves, but also to provide them knowledge on useful things that will move them forward.

Sophie Biggerstaff (30:49)
Amazing. That sounds great. I love that. It's really important, I think, to have people around you where you can bounce ideas off and share wins, share learns and reflect back to each other so that we don't even need to use AI. We can use it from other people as well. We can still maintain a level of humanity in our businesses, which is nice. And just tell us a little bit about you. You really believe around like kind of

Emily (31:02)
Yeah.

Yes.

Sophie Biggerstaff (31:17)
⁓ recommending people to stay true to their initial why even when the business starts growing. So talk to me about that. I fully resonate with that and not lose insight of like the thing that you had because I think there's like that ⁓ shiny magpie syndrome, right? Shiny object syndrome, like magpie vibes. And we can get really distracted by what other people are doing. We can get really distracted by what we see on social media. We can get just so consumed by

Emily (31:35)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (31:47)
everything else that we're not doing rather than things that we are doing. So tell me a little bit about how you encourage people to stay true to that, why particularly when they are implementing some of these business growth ⁓ operational side of things.

Emily (32:03)
think is, normally, you know, you're kind of innate why or like who you want to serve or why you've set up your business. And a lot of people who set up businesses have really great reasons for setting up a business. So usually, it's like a problem that they've encountered, or it's something that they work with people on, they're really strong at solving. So they have really good reasons for setting up a business. And I think not it's not normally your kind of core

purpose that you lose, but you do lose, or you can lose small elements about working for not ideal fit clients, for example, like that's quite an easy one is that obviously money is such a big priority and kind of taking your money, regardless, sometimes is what people end up doing because they feel nervous, or they feel ⁓

that they don't know like when the next client's going to come in. So they take on a bad fit client just because it's money rather than no money. And I think it is a huge challenge for people to say no to things. But in my experience, whenever people have done that, it always goes wrong. So if you take on someone who has loads of red flags to the client, you think they're going to be difficult to work with, they will be like,

they will be and you've filled your space with someone who is going to cause you a lot of stress and probably take too much of your time and therefore not allow you to serve your ideal client. So it's really important to understand your ideal client, be going after your ideal client. So don't wait for people to come to you, like start building relationships with people that you want to be building relationships with. ⁓

then you will build that network so that you are getting those people coming to you. So that's one of the key things that I really see people lose and it is what causes, found us a lot of stress, I think, in terms of working or deviating from what you knew was like your ideal client or your purpose at the start because of money. So it's thinking like, just

Of course you can take a chance on things, either keep it in your mind that it might not work and you've got a deadline for cutting it off if it doesn't work. And proving maybe that that's true, that you should stick to your ideal client. If you really feel that nervous, like try it, see if it works or not. ⁓ But all those learnings hopefully will remind you your original purpose and who you want to serve.

Sophie Biggerstaff (34:52)
Yeah, I mean, I've been there, done that, got t-shirt. Like it's definitely true. And it's not worth it, frankly. Like, yeah, you get some money in your bank, like from the beginning. But actually, if you just hold out, I think sometimes you just have to trust that it's going to come and let the more aligned people in. you're the energy that you're putting out is the energy that you want to attract back, you will attract that back. It's just a case of timing. And I think

Emily (34:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (35:19)
Yeah, it's just not worth it to work with people that suck all of your energy and going back to like the whole point of operating systems in your business is to eliminate the things that do suck your energy or automate them and systemize them. And that's definitely the reason why I've kind of gone on my whole journey of automating and systemizing my whole business over the past year is because it was sucking my energy because I was working with clients that weren't aligned with me because I just didn't feel like I felt more stressed than I felt happy in doing running the business.

So things have to change sometimes. And if you are going through a similar process, following some of the steps that you've mentioned today would be how you kind of eliminate that and move, shift through it. And what, just to end the conversation around operations, what is number one thing that you would suggest someone to go away and do today? I like to be very action oriented. So what was an action that you can give someone listening that's like, God, I need to implement some systems or processes in my business.

what is the thing that's helped you the most or what helps your clients the most that you think someone should definitely go away and do today.

Emily (36:22)
So I think an easy thing is to, like, as you're going through your day, write down things that are a waste of time, you will probably have three to five today that you work through that are a waste of time. So just note them down somewhere. And then at the end of the day, or first thing tomorrow, say, how am going to change this and change it? just is to be the first step is to be more conscious of how you're spending your time and to really

Like the most limited thing we all have is time. So you'd really have to maximize the time that you have. So the more respect you have for it by understanding where it's spent well, where it's not spent well, the better. So the first thing is to write down waste of time things and then address them straight away.

Sophie Biggerstaff (37:13)
Yeah, I always think the first step to everything is self-awareness, right? So you sometimes have to really look at yourself in the mirror, might not be pretty, about what's going wrong or what's not working for you. And then you have to kind of choose to change that. So I think that that's great.

Emily (37:17)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (37:29)
great tip, great advice, very actionable for someone to go away and do today. I feel like I'm doing that constantly like every single day, just because obviously freedom is such a big value of mine and I want to feel very free in all of the things that I'm doing. So I don't want to be focusing my energy on anything that sucks it or is a waste of my time and don't get me wrong, I'm a big procrastinator. So I definitely do do things that are a waste of time, but that's more of a nervous system management problem than an actual like to do list problem. So obviously,

The podcast, I always like to end with the question, what does freedom mean to you? Freedom's a massive value for me. It's like the reason why I set up my business. It's the reason why I teach how to, for people to build businesses that are focused around the lifestyle they want to live. And obviously creating systems, operating procedures in business is a massive part of that. So what does freedom look like for you and what does it mean for you?

Emily (38:19)
Freedom for me means having the balance that I want between work and free time. for me, it's really important to be able to do a mix of everything. So I think having a mix of all the elements in your world makes you a happy person and therefore makes you a more successful business person as well. Because if you don't have happiness overall, then you can't be running

happy, successful business. So I think that's really important. So having freedom means that I've got the choice of how I run things and when I do things, when I have meetings, when I choose to do my work, which then allows me to have the balance that I want elsewhere in my life.

Sophie Biggerstaff (39:05)
Absolutely, it's all about balance. It's definitely a key word of this episode. Love that. And thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom on operations and all things, systems and everything like that. Can you let us know where people can find you and if anyone wants to connect with you.

Emily (39:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm very active on LinkedIn and Instagram. So on LinkedIn, I'm Emily Hatton. And on ⁓ Instagram, I have two pages. So Emily Hatton business art and my community page, which is the female founder space page. And then all the links for everything on there. So very active on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Sophie Biggerstaff (39:44)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much Emily for joining me. It's really nice to chat to you.