#185 - Power in Process: How strong systems can impact more than your business, with Kate Addamo
Have you ever made a business decision that went against your usual process, simply because you were trying to be nice?
As women especially, we often feel pressure to please others and not come across as too rigid, but unfortunately, that often means that we as business owners pay the price.
I recently faced a situation in my business just like this. I knew something needed to change in my processes to prevent it from happening again - but I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I found myself struggling with the very thing I often preach to my clients about!
However, I reached out to my friend Kate Addamo, an exceptionally talented business mentor, and her insights were invaluable.
Kate’s dedication to helping women flourish is underpinned by a focus on health and wellbeing, driven by her own experience with both physical and mental health struggles. She loves empowering women to understand their value, get clear on their services and pricing, put in place the right processes and firm boundaries and come away with immense clarity on where they are going on their business journey. Sounds amazing right?
The Importance of Systems and Boundaries
Kate’s perspective on setting firm boundaries and having clear systems in place transformed my approach. She explained how neglecting these elements leads to burnout, disgruntled clients and even the courtroom. By having a consistent onboarding process, one that is followed for every client, no matter who they are, we set clear expectations from the beginning and avoid unnecessary friction. This approach not only streamlines operations but also significantly boosts confidence and improves client relationships. As I always say, “clear is kind."
The clarity I felt after discussing my issue with Kate was a reminder that no matter how long you've been in the game, there’s always room to grow and improve. Reaching out for help is not a sign of weakness; rather, it's a strategic move toward leveling up.
Processes and systems impact more than your business
Unclear processes or outdated systems have a knock-on effect on everything. From your confidence and cash flow to attracting aligned clients and referrals, the systems and processes you have on day one will set the tone for your entire business.
Like me, a lot of business owners know something needs to change but they’re not sure what it is. Kate talked about the invaluable lesson of knowing your values and making sure your boundaries are clear. That way, your clients know exactly what to expect and you are able to reclaim time and focus on what truly matters in life.
If you’ve felt that niggling need for change or sensed something isn’t quite right, perhaps it's time to review your processes and seek advice from those you trust.
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[00:00:00] Tracey: I recently had an experience in my business where I needed to reach out to a business friend of mine to ask for help. And I want to share that in this episode with you for full transparency. And so you can see firsthand how it is that we all need help from time to time and just how important some of these things are.
[00:00:40] What I needed help with related to processes and systems in my business. And gosh, it's not lost on me how that sounds because processes and systems Is something that I speak to my clients about a lot, as you know, if you're a long time listener, but it occurred to me that so many of us think I've been doing this for so long.
[00:01:00] I should know how to do this, or I've been doing this for so long. No one can help me. But what had happened was there was a situation that arose in my business. And I just, for the life of me, couldn't see the forest for the trees. And I'm so comfortable to share that openly because I turned to someone who was on the podcast recently.
[00:01:17] to give me a bit of a hand and she was amazing. So I'm joined in today's episode by Kate Addamo. Again, Kate was with me on a recent episode, episode 178, where we talked about what it really means to flourish in business. And that's a really nice segue, I suppose, into today's episode where we're really going to dive in and talk about boundaries and processes and systems.
[00:01:39] And Kate's perspective on this is so unique, I think, and it's driven by her own personal experience, which she shares. But honestly, hand on heart, the value that she was able to offer me when I got into this situation, or when I found myself in this situation, really was incredible. And I'm so grateful. So there we have it.
[00:01:58] Let's dive in and I'll join you at the end. Hello, Kate. Welcome back to the podcast.
[00:02:07] Kate: Thank you, Tracy. Thank you so much for having me again so quickly. I feel very honored to be here twice.
[00:02:13] Tracey: Kate, our last episode only a couple of weeks ago was so popular and I'm so delighted that you made yourself available at such short notice to do this one with me today. I'm just going to share with listeners quickly why it is I really wanted to get you back on in such short succession after the last episode, I've had a lot of clients reach out to me since our last episode, because they've experienced Kate Addamo for the first time for many of them, as they should, so you're welcome.
[00:02:39] But what happened a couple of weeks ago, this is for my beautiful listeners. I had an issue in my business that I needed help with, and I did a really quick SOS to Kate, and it was around processes and systems. And the irony here is that I talk to my clients about this all the time. And I want to share here in this episode for full transparency and to continue with bringing authentic content that even though I work with my clients on it, I still get it wrong too.
[00:03:12] And this came up when I was sharing this with a client last week and they went, Oh my gosh, Tracy, I can't believe you have issues too about this. And I totally do because I'm just like everyone else and I get in those moments where I can't see the forest for the trees. And so I reached out to Kate and just went, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it, I'm stunned. This has happened. Can you talk me through this because I'm not sure what to do here. Just side note, Kate doesn't know details of my clients. She doesn't know what the issue was. She doesn't know specifics, but she doesn't need to. So that's what I want to talk about today to share this because the particular client that I was sharing this with last week got so much value from hearing this.
[00:03:52] And it occurred to me that as always, listeners are going to get so much value out of this too. So, Kate, let's start with a little bit about why it is that you started working on boundaries and how that sort of lent into processes and systems with business owners. Let's start there.
[00:04:09] Kate: Yeah, thank you, Tracy. Great question. And yeah, I was really, glad to be able to help you, um, so thank you for reaching out. I'm glad we could work through that. I think for me, it started very early on in my business journey. And I think for a lot of us, we have worked for other people. We were exhausted by that. We found things that didn't work for us. And I knew when I started this business, it had to be very different. And I think I mentioned in the last episode, or if you listen to any of my podcasts, my health played a big factor in that. I had severe adrenal fatigue so I had to be very fierce with my boundaries and my processes and I couldn't really have any, you know, margin for error in that because I was the one that suffered always, which is what I see with a lot of creatives in business.
[00:04:49] There was a period there, I think, in the first 18 months where I actually used to get quite upset about it and I think, why was this happening to me? Why am I the one that's always suffering and really, really struggling every day to get out of bed to work with my clients and just to function.
[00:05:01] And I had a moment on a call with a mentor and I just had these tears run down my face and it was tears of gratitude. And I'm actually getting a little bit emotional thinking about it now. It was like, because this is your purpose, Kate, this is what you're here to do. And the more work I've done on myself, the more that I realised this, this is something that I'm genuinely here to do because so many women are facing health issues, burnout, like on the rise, we're seeing it everywhere.
[00:05:23] And part of my purpose is to teach women how to live in flow, to have space for them to work on their business and to work with their clients. And they're three very separate things. And they're three things that I focus on each week, not just all the client work. So boundaries are something that I am very passionate about because without them, it just leads to burnout, client resentment, cash flow issues.
[00:05:45] It's a flow on effect that impacts your business and then it flows into your life, your family relationships and your health. So without them, I think business is just always going to be hard.
[00:05:55] Tracey: Oh, you've nailed it. And I love the holistic approach. Again, you know, I love that. Let's dive in then to some practical examples, because I use the phrase processes and systems all the time with my clients. It's part of the work I do developing documents. We look at how they're going to integrate. But it's occurred to me, and this came clear when I was talking to this particular creative client of mine last week, some people still don't really appreciate yet what it actually means to have processes and systems in their creative business.
[00:06:23] So what's an example, Kate, you work with creatives as I do processes and systems. What's it mean? How do we start diving in to look at those processes and systems? What is it?
[00:06:34] Kate: Can think of a great example just even the last few weeks with an interior designer and this is something that it comes up quite often and I think a lot of people being creative and women, and I think the people pleasing, we don't want things to appear too hard and firm and to feel like we're hard work or any of those things.
[00:06:49] I think there's a lot of stories come up and sometimes we try and keep things casual to appear easy to deal with but what ends up happening is it becomes a mess from the beginning. And what I'm here to teach my clients is teach your clients how to treat you in that respect from the first phone call from having a really good onboarding process.
[00:07:07] And if things are really flaky then, and we skip the steps, it really affects the outcome It will just, for example, with this, with this designer, if there isn't the same onboarding process for every client, it then makes it harder because we haven't maybe done the questionnaire, or we haven't done the Pinterest board, or we haven't got the information that we needed, and we haven't spent a good chunk of time in the onboarding, we've just said, yep, here's a price, let's go for it.
[00:07:29] Now, my designers are ready to do it but we don't have any backstory. We don't know the people well enough. We haven't dug deep enough and we haven't fleshed out the onboarding. So now we're going to have issues down the track that we didn't need to have because they didn't maybe sign a contract or they didn't sign it at the right time.
[00:07:45] They didn't start paying for things before everything so we hadn't set that standard and we hadn't got enough information to really get to know who they were and then we've delivered something and it's not right. Then there's friction, then things don't want to be paid and it just, it flows. The first interaction can make or break that client journey. And I see it breaking it so many times, which is why I find it so important to have very clear steps that you follow for every single client, because whenever you skip them or it's a gray area or it's a friend or it's, Oh, it's a, this person or that person or whatever story we want to say, that's usually be the one that's going to bite us.
[00:08:22] So for me, I've had the same onboarding for like five years and it's just so important and I was even recently just talking to a builder that I know, and he went through the same thing, onboarded someone that he knew and something wasn't, you know, in the contract at the beginning, it was a bit casual because they knew each other. Now it's going through the courts. like got to treat every situation the same. It doesn't matter how we know them, how they've come to us. Everyone pays the same. There's no discounts. This is how we on board. This is where you pay. This is the process and I don't ever have any issues because I've been doing it the same way for the last five years and we continue to grow and improve that.
[00:08:56] If there's an issue or something that needs tightening or another email that needs to be sent as a reminder, We're going to do those things because we want it to be the most seamless and stress free for myself, my team, and my clients. We don't want friction. We just want it to really flow and a really great process will allow for that.
[00:09:12] Tracey: Is this one of those times where you could say clear is kind? So to set yourself up for success and set your clients up for success at the beginning, be absolutely crystal clear with what you're expecting from them and how you're going to deliver the services. So clear is kind
[00:09:31] Kate: really is.
[00:09:32] Tracey: I think so. And is it your experience? Because I know this is my experience personally, as well as clients that I work with, that when we try to be too nice, and I don't mean that we're not nice anyway, but, Oh, I know this person so I'm going to just be a little more lax here and I just, Oh, look, I'm not going to do that because you know, it'll be right.
[00:09:53] That is the time where, as you say, it comes back to bite us. I think everyone listening could draw on a situation right now where they're going, yep, Kate, absolutely, I hear you because that one time that I didn't do my normal onboarding or that I didn't do the normal process, it did come back to bite me.
[00:10:11] And really, if we're going to be accountable or hold ourselves accountable, I allowed that to happen because I didn't follow my process. On that, you've said you've had the same onboarding process for five years. I had too. Well, actually, no, I've sort of refined mine a little bit over the years, but essentially it was the same and I'd never had any issues.
[00:10:34] And I'd always had really enthusiastic clients who prioritise the work we do together. But I went through a period where the level of prioritisation wasn't there and so it was really impacting how I was working with clients, some and the quality of the work I could do. And I realised, I realised I needed to ask for help.
[00:11:00] So that's the first thing I want to say is it's okay to ask for help. And even if you've been doing it for so long and it's always worked, it doesn't mean you're not going to have a hiccup at some point in time or something's not going to come left field and I feel like that's what happened to me. And so it's okay to reach out to whoever you surround yourself with in business, because I talk about that so often on here, who you surround yourself with in business is so important. And I have Kate as a friend and as a client, and as someone who helps me. You reach out and ask for help.
[00:11:29] And so I realised after all these years, I needed to make a change but I didn't know what it was because I couldn't say the forest for the trees. Do you get that a lot? People coming to you because to you, it was a no brainer. It was so clear. Oh my gosh, Tracy, I cannot believe you don't do this, but it had never occurred to me
[00:11:44] Kate: yeah, I think that's a big part of it. It's because people are so far in it, they're doing the client work. They're just trying to keep the client happy. They're really worried about just trying to bring money in and they're skipping steps that they don't often have time to even look at that or that that might even be an issue or something that's making it harder.
[00:12:02] And I see that for the last seven years, I've seen that and we'll continue to see that and it's something that I really want to help creatives and small business owners to change because without it, it just, it sets the wrong tone and it's just exhausting not having that right process.
[00:12:18] Tracey: It is. And what I really like about this. So it's not dissimilar to a client coming along to me and saying, Hey Tracy, I've been doing this for a while and I've been really lucky. Nothing's gone wrong, but now's the time to level up and I want to develop new contracts or new agreements and can you help me?
[00:12:33] Absolutely. I've got a process. I dive in. I ask all the questions to get the whole picture. Yours is the same. So whether it's a new business or someone who's been doing this for a long time, but you know, there's always this niggling thing, isn't there? When you've been doing it for a long time and you know, something needs to be tweaked because what got me here is not going to get me there.
[00:12:52] What is it? Where's the up level? And the work that you do around these processes and systems can be a game changer. Can you think of a really good example that feeds into this of working with somebody and the transformation here? Because to you, it's easy to others. It's not easy and can make the biggest impact is just having this insight on what up level processes and systems can look like.
[00:13:19] Kate: Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's, it's with so many of my clients. I see it impacts, once it's tightened, immediately there's a lot more confidence. At first there's a fear, there's always a fear of, I can't do this and people are going to go away and I'm going to, you know, look like a bit of a hard ass or whatever.
[00:13:34] And it's. Then they'll do it. Someone will accept it. They'll accept it with ease. And it's like, Oh, I actually can do this. And then it just, it flows on. So there's a lot more confidence that they know what they're doing, the client knows what they're doing, that they respect it. It also changes the cashflow, which is a big issue.
[00:13:51] So people are actually across how many clients they need to bring in when they're tracking their cashflow. And there's a different understanding of, okay, I need to focus on this work here, I need to invoice here, it just starts to flow everywhere to more aligned clients. It really weeds out the people that aren't going to be the right fit because if people don't want to pay in advance for the service or don't want to sign things or don't want to follow your steps, great. That's a massive red flag. Let them go. That's a blessing. So I think Trying to change our onboarding and our process to suit everyone when people don't know what the process is, is the worst thing we could do because as the service provider, we're here to provide the container. We know what it's going to take to get to the outcome that people want and if they're wanting to skip those steps, we're going to impact the outcome. We're going to impact our cashflow. We're going to impact their trust, respect, the word of mouth, the retention or, you know, any of those things that it affects relationships. So, I've just seen a lot more confidence, better clients, better cash flow, um, more empowered business owners.
[00:14:54] It honestly, it flows into everything because when they start respecting themselves there and have those better boundaries, it goes across and it flows into their life. And I think one of the most important things that I look at with boundaries with women now is coming up from a different place because when I say put boundaries in place and have a system, it's like, Oh yeah, I could, but now I'm going deeper. What is it that you want for your life? What are you visualizing? What do you value? And for me, it's things like space, time for myself, you know, good food to nurture myself. I want to have space and time to do those things.
[00:15:24] I value those things. So what do you as the individual woman value? Great, because we need to make space for that. And if you were just letting your clients just do whatever they want, you can't do the things that you value. And we've got to come from the place of what do you value and what matters and frame it back that way. And I find that that's a more important, impactful way to be able to do it sometimes with women.
[00:15:44] Tracey: Kate, that's so valuable. Thank you for sharing that. And just as I'm listening to you, I know listeners will be nodding along going, yep, I get distracted. My thing is that sinking stomach feeling when something's not working. I personally experienced this sinking stomach feeling and I think, oh, what is it?
[00:16:02] It doesn't feel right. And that flows on for me into whether I'm feeling like showing up and sharing things that I want to share on Instagram. Whether I can actually sit and engage with my eight year old who wants to tell me some story and honestly, she takes so long to tell stories, which is beautiful, but if I'm not present, she gets it, she can tell. And then I want to go and grab something really quick and easy for dinner. It's not a great choice. That's a focus area of mine. It's really distracting. And last week or the week before when we worked this out together, it was profound in terms of what was so easy to you, I couldn't see it, but then I could. Then we tic tac'd a bit. It was very much, yes, I accept I can be highly strung. So I was really into it. Oh my gosh, working it through and you were there. And now in my business, fast forward to now, there's just a level of ease knowing that I actually up leveled, still can't believe it happened, still can't believe that I hadn't seen it.
[00:17:03] I feel like a bit of an idiot because I talk to clients about it so often. And yet it happened to me. I was just blindsided by something, but having the right people coming along, let's talk this through and they were other drivers. I just didn't, I just didn't Think that I should apply the same process to everyone because I might meet people in different environment.
[00:17:23] They might be a friend of a friend. I tell clients not to do it, but yet sometimes I do. So what I'm saying here is it happens to all of us, but reaching out to talk to the right people to get insight. I don't know what I need Tracey, can you help me? Yes. I don't know what to do here, Kate, but I've gotten to this plateau.
[00:17:43] I And you know, people do sit there and think, Oh, well, I've been doing this long enough now there's nothing else that anyone can help me with. No one else can help me with this. But guess what? They can. Whether it's your lawyer or your mentor or your coach, they can. And that's what I wanted to shine a light on in this episode.
[00:18:01] And I'm so grateful that we got to have this chat and we got to share my own silly, silly mistake. If we call it a silly mistake or just a silly oversight that I'm so happy to share so others can nod along go, Hey, it happens to me too. Let's reach out and have a conversation and let's see what we can do to up level and improve because there's always little increments that we can work on to improve and up level and, you know, like I always say, what got you here won't get you there.
[00:18:28] And if it's time to uplevel, talk to the right people, get the right support, and get those unique perspectives that could really be game changer for you because it sure was for me.
[00:18:40] Kate: Yeah, it really is. And I just think we need to take the path of least resistance. Life is, is layered now. It's, it's more fast paced than it, than it ever was. I'm such a big believer on having really good foundations in your business and in your life, so that things just are easier because I think when there's chaos, or we try to be too flexible or too nice, we're making it so much harder for ourself and for our client.
[00:19:03] And I don't see it as a silly mistake, Tracy. I just see it as like, you're, you're in there doing the work you had, you know, a great process, but we just had a few little screws to tighten because things have changed. And I think people's, you know, bandwidth in society has changed. So maybe it's less time in certain things.
[00:19:18] It's just like little tweaks based on what is life look like right now for people. And what our process was three or four or five years ago might need to be a little bit different just in our current climate. And while I said, I've had mine for five, we just continue to tweak and we've done a few more over the last few months.
[00:19:33] We continue to tweak it to where I'm at, where my clients are at and just what's going to be the best solution for everyone to just move through the work with with ease because we want it to be ease. We don't want our clients to feel friction or resistance with us. And I think with a lack of good boundaries and clarity, Clients will feel that.
[00:19:52] And one example, just quickly on that was I had a client recently on board with me and I used Avasado and just the process was smooth and clean and just very organized and easy. And she said, she's worked with other mentors in the past and it was, you know, a few documents attached here and spelling errors, and it was a bit scrappy.
[00:20:06] And she said, I had so much more confidence in the process, Kate, because of How the onboarding flowed. And I think that that is such an important thing. And I've worked with different creatives over the years myself and there's people I've got to hunt for invoices. They don't send you a contract. It's scrappy and I don't have a lot of confidence in it.
[00:20:24] They might be amazing at what they do, but I find working with them actually hard work and it's such a turnoff. And I think don't let your onboarding and your process and your client journey be the thing that lets down your exceptional service. And has such a big impact on your business and your reputation.
[00:20:41] Tracey: I love that. That's a perfect place to end. Thank you, Kate, for sharing that. We will include your details in the show notes again, and if you've missed the episode I did with Kate a couple of weeks ago, we're going to include those details in the show notes as well because we really did focus in that episode on what it really means to flourish in business.
[00:20:58] So it's a beautiful segue into that episode from this one. So I'll include that below. Thanks, Kate.
[00:21:03] Kate: Thank you so much for having me, Tracy. Really appreciate it.
[00:21:09] Tracey: Oh gosh, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I really enjoyed chatting to Kate about that and as I said at the beginning, I'm just so happy to share really openly and transparently with you about my experience because I just know that there's so many listeners that'll be able to take quite a bit of value from this episode.
[00:21:28] And just hopefully it'll give some business owners, just that little bit of comfort to know that, Hey, you're not alone. It's not just you, the struggles from time to time. And perhaps that bit of confidence or that little nudge that you might need to reach out to that person or that professional or whoever it is that you think can help you up level in your business, because we can't do it alone and who we surround ourselves with in business really matters. And I say that so much.
[00:21:56] If you haven't listened to episode 178 with Kate, please do. If you loved this conversation today, you'll love that one. We'll put Kate's details in the show notes in case you want to go and check her out a little more on Instagram or on her website.
[00:22:10] As always, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you being here. I'll catch you next time.
LINKS:
Connect with Kate Addamo:
Website: https://kateaddamo.com/
Podcast: Life and Business in Flow the Podcast - kateaddamo.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeandbusinessinflow/
Previous episode mentioned: What it really means to Flourish in business, with Kate Addamo
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