Stage One of the Business Credit Success Guide
How to Build Small Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee

Step 15 ~ Systemize Your Business

The small business owner too often is the only factor determining the success and failure of their business.  Although the task of systemizing your business can seem daunting, it can help overcome this downfall and provide your small business with every chance to succeed, with or without your direct participation in the day-to-day business activities.  This becomes very important when applying for large business lines of credit as all banks will be more hesitant to lend to a company that is destined for failure without the direct participation of the small business owner.  Having a system means security both for the banks and for your business.

The first step is to understand what we mean by systemizing your business.  Simply put, it is implementing and documenting processes for each task in your business and creating an engine (system) for your business to run automatically. By documenting the process required for each task you will have the beginnings of an Operations Manual and begin to free yourself from being the only person who understands how to run your business. Think of it this way, if the company that created the engine for your car didn’t provide a manual for each of the components that details how they operate and cooperate with other components to create a fully-functional system then it would be difficult and very time-consuming for anyone except the original company to come in and fix a problem or simply service the vehicle.  The good news is there is a manual thereby allowing any auto mechanic the ability to step in and diagnose problems to provide a simple and cost-effective solution to get the engine running properly again.  If you don’t have the same manual setup for your business you are setting it up for failure, unless of course you want to be directly involved for the rest of your life.

Before you get started developing your Operations Manual it is important to start with determining the long-term goals you envision for your small business.  Once you have an idea of the ideal size and scope of your business you can determine the eventual revenue and potential number of employees needed to maintain a profitable business at that level, which are also included in your Business Plan and Marketing Plan.  From there you can create an organizational chart of current and future employees along with job descriptions to handle the different departmental processes.  You have now given your business a structure to live by to help it grow in the future without your direct involvement.

Each business is different and has different operational structure so for now it might be necessary to only have a few process included in your Operations Manual, but remember to continue to add or modify your manual as your small business continues to grow.

Recommended Resources:

• How to Produce Effective Operations and Maintenance Manuals

• The Ultimate Operations Manual

• How to Make Your Business Run Without You

• Instant Systems (Instant Success)