A few months ago I was doing a series of research calls when it became evident that
thinking in systems is not something that everybody does.
Throughout these calls, I got perhaps the most important feedback I've gotten since
moving away from web development. The person I was talking to said I read all of
your stuff and I'm always like, this sounds awesome,
but I don't even know where to start or how to ask.
And some version of this quote came up multiple times throughout these calls. So
I decided I would finally solve this problem
of solopreneurs not knowing where to start
when building systems. I want to make it as easy as possible
for you to start, which is why I put together the solopreneur System Starter kit.
It's available now and today I am going to walk you through the four systems. Every
solopreneur needs to run a business that allows them to take time off, worry free.
So I'm gonna give you a high level overview of all four kits today, or all four systems.
And if you wanna get your hands on this resource, this is the most valuable thing
I've ever created
and it's completely free. You can get it at streamlined fm slash kit. You will get
the full document that tells you not only what the systems are and why you need them,
but my systems and then the simplest version of each of those systems. It will give
you a full tools index of all the tools I recommend for you to build these systems.
And it will give you an automations and AI prompts swipe file. So again, that's over
at streamlined fm slash kit,
but in this episode I'm gonna tell you why
we have these four systems and why you need them. Hey everybody in, welcome to another
episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, the show that helps you automate your business
so you can take time off, worry you free. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And here's
the problem, most people don't think in systems. I remember the first time I went
to my accountant, I was probably 19 and I figured it was time for me to start my
side hustle, uh, or or treat my side hustle of building websites as an actual business.
I had been reading books on how to start a business and one of those books talked
about the shoebox method for accounting, which is just shoving receipts into a shoebox
and letting your accountant sort that out later. That sounded like madness to me,
but I thought I'd play a little joke on my accountant who was also a family friend
and I told him that's what I was doing and I will never forget the look on his face
wide eyes, mouth aga, cold sweat forming on his brow
before I told him I was kidding
because even then 20 years ago,
I knew the importance of having importance, a good system. I was a pretty sloppy
kid to be honest with you ask my parents or my college roommate.
But I knew
in my business, in school work and in work work,
I need to be organized if I'm going to
excel at anything.
And that's ultimately why I moved from web development to podcasting to now helping
solopreneurs because I know how hard it is for people to build systems and think
in systems and build something that lets them confidently take time away from their
business. I had a panic attack six years ago
as I record this
and the systems I put in place are the thing that helps me now stay calm and not
freak out and not be working all the time so I can spend
time with my children, with my wife
away from my desk.
So
that is why we need
good systems
because the truth is,
being a solopreneur doesn't mean that you need to do everything yourself. You don't
need more work.
I think that people believe that busy is equivalent to being productive, but it's
not.
Right. You can if you're, if your car is stuck in the mud, you can spill in your
wheels all you want, but you're not getting outta the mud.
You need productive work. You need a couple of people to help you push your car out
of the mud.
So
not having a system in place means that you might be busy,
but you're not being productive, you're not using your time wisely.
And
if you're anything like me, you left
full-time employment to get time back.
And that's what these four systems, the four I've been
teasing them, but the four systems are
admin work,
your CRM,
content creation and idea generation and capture. So I'm gonna walk you through the
why
and what these systems are and why they're important.
And I'm gonna refer you to streamline fm slash kit if you want to get the whole thing.
So
let's start
with
the admin work.
I put the admin work first because it could potentially have the biggest impact,
right? You should have a system for capturing your daily work calendar, events, notes,
tasks, actionable items from meetings and email. And luckily there are a lot of default
apps for pretty much all of these. But a system isn't just a bunch of apps,
it's making those apps, those tools work together.
And so there are a few questions that you should ask yourself
as you're putting together your system
for admin work.
Uh, the first is, how can you protect the time on your calendar so that you can do
your best work?
How are you capturing tasks into a task manager you'll actually use?
Are you able to quickly capture notes and put them someplace where they don't get
lost to history?
And how are you getting your most important action items from meetings and emails
while still being
fully present?
And there are a couple of really important things here, right? The first is
a lot of people believe if it's important enough, I'm not going to forget it or it'll
come back to me. That is demonstrably not true.
We forget things all the time, especially as we get older or we have more things
going on.
My mind was a steel trap
when I was the only person I had to think about taking care of
when I was the only person whose wellbeing, uh, you know, was important to me most
of the time, as long as I wasn't with my parents or brothers.
Now I have a wife and three kids,
so my brain is constantly thinking about their wellbeing as well as doing all of
my work stuff.
So we will forget things and being able to capture them into a place that's gonna
surface the information when we need it is really important.
The other thing is protecting your time.
I wanna recommend a book here called At Your Best. It's by Kerry EU Hoff. And he
will walk you through in this book
how to figure out when you do your best
work, when you do your worst work, and how to structure your day
so that you are
doing your best work or that you're doing your most important work at your best time.
I know I'm at my best in the mornings, so I have no meetings from 7:00 AM to 11:00 AM
that that time is sacred to me.
I know I am at my worst from 2:00 PM to like 4:00 PM So I will put meetings or work
that doesn't require a lot of energy at that time or, or maybe I'll just go to the
gym
or go for a walk
'cause I know I'm not going to get any productive work done at that time. So understand
how you work and then use your system to protect your best time.
Use a calendar app or a scheduling app and make sure that you have lots of time blocked
off on your calendar
so that you can dig into your important work without interruption. That's what the
ad, that's really the admin work system is twofold. It's protecting your time and
it's surfacing the information you need when you need it.
So that is the admin system.
now let's move on to the CRM.
That's the second system in this kit.
CRM stands for customer relationship management. And most simply, it's a way to capture,
nurture, and convert leads into customers or clients. And there are entire industries
and enterprises based on this niche.
But your CRM does not need to be complicated.
I always recommend starting with some simple thing that you'll actually use
Big Honk and CRMs can be super overwhelming and require a lot of access to other
accounts right off the bat.
And that's what prevented me from implementing A CRM in my business for a long time.
And I'll say here, HubSpot is a former and current sponsor of my content over on
YouTube
and LinkedIn
and they have a free CRM and it's really good.
I use it now because I know what I need.
But you can use something basic like notion,
uh, or or whatever, a Google sheet. And the really nice thing about notion in a Google
sheet is when you're ready to graduate to HubSpot for free,
you can export, right? They make onboarding pretty painless.
But A-A-A-C-R-M, here's how important A CRM is
in 2025,
I added $20,000 to quarter four simply by following up with leads from earlier that
year.
Most people won't just reach out when they need you. Most people need a nudge. And
the CRM
is a place for you to know who to nudge and when.
So when you're thinking about your CRM, I think consider these requirements.
People should be able to fill out a form and automatically get and be automatically
sent to your CRM.
You should also have a way to set up reminders or follow ups so that you don't forget.
You should track the status of your leads to see how effective your outreach and
sales are. It doesn't have to be a lot. It could just be like,
uh, new lead prospect,
uh, or had sales call proposal sent, one lost, maybe later work complete,
right? Something to just let you know how things are going
and make it something that you'll actually use. Like I said, if you think that Google
Sheets is the place where you're most comfortable, start there and upgrade later.
Now,
the last thing I wanna say about CRMs in general, again, you can get the full walkthrough
recommended tools recommended setup in in the kit
over at Streamline fm slash kit.
But
I think that forms are really a linchpin of the crm. And I think you should have
three, three kinds of forms your call scheduler. So like a cal.com or.com,
uh, a mailing list, opt-in
and lead capture forms. These are the ways that people will raise their hand and
tell you
they are interested in what you are doing.
So I think you should have all three of those forms now.
Now is also a really good time for me to mention my fewest links philosophy,
uh, which is that the fewer links in the chain, the better,
big complicated automations are fun, but the more links there are, the more likely
something is to break
direct integrations or one step automations are often best from a reliability standpoint.
And this is why I think a tool like HubSpot is really good and important because
a lot of HubSpot has direct integration to a lot of things. They even have their
own forum builder. So
that is something to consider
when you're building your CRM, make it something you'll actually use and make it
something that is easy to get people into and something that will remind you to actually
follow up with those folks.
Now in the kit,
uh, I also talk about like customer onboarding. That's a whole other animal. I actually
don't make it its own like this could have been like five systems, but I do talk
a lot about that in in the actual system starter kit.
Uh, 'cause that's something else to consider and something that can piggyback right
off of your CRM.
Okay? Content creation. If you are a solopreneur, this, this is the third system.
Content creation. If you're a solopreneur, you're likely creating some sort of content
videos, podcasts, articles, newsletters. And having a good system in place for this
is important to be consistent without feeling overwhelmed.
So you should have a system for this. And again, it could be a Google sheet, it could
be notion, whatever works best for you,
but you should consider these things.
How are you capturing ideas, which we'll talk about more in the next section.
Uh, what the idea approval process looks like.
How you're tracking the status of multiple pieces of content. This one's really important,
right? Mondays, I protect my time. I have no meetings on Mondays.
Mondays are my recording days.
My kids are at my father-in-law's. I know the house is quiet. So I have five podcast
episodes. I'm recording today and at least one YouTube video.
And I wouldn't know, I wouldn't be able to record all five of those episodes today
if I didn't know
what I was talking about. And so having a system that allows me to look at my, my
content schedule and review everything, and then record is really important for you
to batch content. Otherwise, you're just running around every week going, what am
I gonna talk about?
How am I gonna talk about it?
And that increases the length
of the content creation process.
What tools are you using to create the content? How is that content getting edited
and reviewed? Again, in my system, editing is really easy because I do a lot of stuff
on the front end to make sure I don't have to edit on the back end.
What goes into publishing? How are you promoting it? How are you repurposing your
content?
And maybe most importantly, what is the
goal of your content?
The goal of your content is going to dictate how often you publish and on what platforms.
It's also going to determine your CTAI have one call to action in this episode.
Get the solopreneur system starter kit.
My goal is to get people onto my mailing list.
That's the goal of this podcast and my YouTube channel. People should know I know
what I'm talking about
and want to learn more.
So
understand what your goal is because it's going to affect everything else.
I also wanna mention repurposing here, right? The reason that I am, uh, so proficient
and I can publish to a lot of places
is because I repurpose, I write my newsletters
and then I look at my newsletters to see which would make good podcast episodes.
How can I combine these to make an a full episode out of it?
What do I talk about in my newsletters that could be good show and tell YouTube videos
and how can I chop these newsletters down
into a social post?
All of that is because it all, it all lives in my planner
inside of my system.
So a planner goes a long way. I'm not gonna tell you which one to use in the kit,
in the system starter kit, I do tell you,
uh, what I think you should use if you don't know where to start.
The last thing I'll say in this section is, uh,
I've basically written a treatise on AI and creative work.
The line is going to be different for everyone.
For me, I don't think it should touch
anything until post-production.
And so when I use AI to speed up my content process,
it's strictly on the backend.
Very few times I will say, take this really long written work and turn it into an
outline for a podcast episode.
But
it's really just taking the headlines from my article at that point.
It suggests a bunch of stuff, but I don't really pay attention to that stuff.
So it
should really, for me it's post-production work. That line is gonna be different
for everybody.
Okay?
Also, I should say that I have like a lot of other opinions about AI and I'm sure
you've heard them
if you've a long time listener,
if you are a long time listener. But
the important parts of your system are capture ideas.
Give yourself a way to plan content ahead of time so you can batch it and repurpose
Okay?
The last system, idea generation and capture.
Every solopreneur should have this.
It's a a way to quickly capture ideas. We all have ideas. Maybe you're wondering
why it wasn't part of another system, but I think an idea can slot into any of these
systems. And so you wanna have a separate place to capture and evaluate ideas. That's
not mucking up the works for your CRM or your content planner or your admin work,
right?
Like if you just threw every idea you had into a task manager,
that would muck up your task manager.
So I like to put my ideas some someplace separate. I put them in obsidian.
That could be different for you. That's not really the point
of the idea capture system.
the point of the idea capture system
is make it easy for you to capture ideas wherever you are.
So you want to ask yourself these questions.
What devices do you use? And what devices do you usually have on you?
What apps do you use to take notes?
What apps are you using with the other systems we've talked about here?
Do you prefer to write
type or talk
because that's also going to affect how you capture things And how do you evaluate
ideas?
I share my full system here, but I mostly,
I, I use obsidian for everything. And so I make it very easy for me to capture to
obsidian no matter what I'm doing. My my Voice Memos app will automatically send
notes to obsidian.
I have a button on my lock screen for me to automatically put a note in
obsidian or to
quickly put a note in obsidian.
So you want to capture ideas as quickly as possible because you will forget them.
so this is why the system is different because ideas can apply to any place
you want to capture ideas. And then maybe once a week, maybe when you're not at your
best,
right? When you're in, in one of your
uh, less productive times, you can just go through and say, oh, this was a good idea.
I'm keeping this, this was a terrible idea. Get rid of it.
But you want a place to quickly capture ideas and you should make it One place.
I've talked to, to solopreneurs, I've experienced this myself where I have ideas
in a bunch of different apps
and I thought this is silly
Obsidian is where all of my notes go now,
except for one note I've shared with my wife in Apple Notes. 'cause I'm not going
to subject my wife to obsidian.
So everything else, everything from my work, all the ideas I have, it all goes in
obsidian. Once a week during my weekly startup routine or my weekly planning session,
I will go through my ideas inbox or my notes inbox in obsidian
and I will process them. You should do the same thing.
So those are the four systems, admin work, CRM, content creation, idea generation,
and Capture.
They can all interconnect
if you want, but
you don't need to build them all at once.
I would say pick the one that feels the most urgent and the most chaotic right now
and start there
over at Streamlined fm slash kit. I'll have a link in the description too.
Streamlined fm slash kit.
You can pick the system. And then
there is a section on how to implement it.
So insanely valuable resource
and as the simplest version of each system, the exact tools and you get automations
and AI prompts all laid out
in the free solopreneur system starter kit.
But that's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening to the Streamline solopreneur
and until next time,
I hope you find some space in your week.