317: Scale Without Chaos: The Five Systems Every Small Business Needs with Kathy Feather

Melissa (: 00:00

I wanna just start with a formal bio for Kathy and then we'll talk about where she's headed. She's got a presentation for us today, but Kathy is the founder of Kayfeather Solutions where she empowers coaches and course creators to amplify their impact and reclaim their time through strategic business optimization. Through her signature blueprint to freedom process, Kathy provides tailored

back office strategy, tech management, process optimization, and travel services that free entrepreneurs to focus on their vision, clients, and the things they love in life. Based in Greenville, South Carolina, not far from me, Kathy specializes in developing tailored tech and AI solutions for small business owners and entrepreneurs, helping them achieve operational excellence.

while maintaining authentic brand consistency. You know that feeling when your business was smaller and everything felt manageable, you've managed everything effectively, but then something shifts. Suddenly what used to work isn't working anymore. And today Kathy is going to walk through the core five pillars of business technology that every small business needs to have in place, not just to survive,

rategy in this digital era of: 2025

is your capacity for the back end. And this is where Kathy is brilliant. So Kathy, so excited to have you speak today and really talk about the true cost of chaos, essential tech foundations for growth. So I am gonna stop sharing and I'm gonna pass it over to you, my friend.

Kathy (: 02:16

All right. Well, thank you so much. Perfect. All right. So as Melissa alluded to, we all feel our business is going great. Things are working. Clients love what we offer and we are happy go lucky. And it always starts out that way when you're a solopreneur. But as your business grows and by growth, I don't just mean adding people, adding clients, adding complexity, new product offerings,

All sorts of things need to happen in your back office to allow you to manage that successfully in your business. And today we're going to talk about that true cost of chaos. So all of y'all in the audience are small business owners. Hopefully you remember the day when things seemed like they were just sailing along perfectly. So now you've grown a little bit. Are you and your team members finding that you are wasting hours every day?

chasing emails, responding to emails, client frustrations, data protection, you might've just had a cybersecurity incident in your business, or even more importantly, you find you are spending a ton of money, I've heard upwards of $12,000 a year plus in businesses with unused subscriptions that make no sense in your business. Well, we all find ourselves here at some point.

And today we're going to talk about ensuring as your business grows, you have those five core pillars in place in your back office. So you don't set yourself up to become stagnant. You don't get to that first hundred thousand or $200,000 mark. And then you can't get to the 500,000. You can't double again. You can't get to the million dollar mark because you simply have no more capacity. Well,

I want to talk about this and I want to tell you stay till the end because if you have some of these things in your back office, I'm going to tell you within 10 minutes of your time at the end, how you can evaluate if they're actually working for you or against you. So first I want to give you a couple of statistics. So did you know that automating invoice and payment processing saves the average small business one to two hours a week? What could you do with two hours more in your week?

Kathy (: 04:39

I know I could do a ton. Automating administrative services or your client onboarding or team onboarding processes, that can save you roughly 23 days a year. Yes, days, not hours, 23 days a year. And automating and fine tuning your discovery process with your clients, your follow-up process, that can roughly save you 104 hours a year.

That is the equivalent of 2.5 weeks vacation. Who wants to go off on a 2.5 week vacation? Yep. I see you there, George. Me too. And the great thing is you can. The bad thing is if you haven't used these five foundations successfully, you take that two week vacation, you're going to stress test your system, and you're going to find out your system wasn't quite ready for you. So let's start with how are we going to get there?

and what we have to consider as we grow. And then we're going to get into those five core pillars. And then we're going to talk about some of the mindset shifts that we all have to make as we go from those first few clients to the first hundred clients to the first thousand clients. And it all matters. And then I'm going to give you some very actionable steps at the very end. We're right after lunch. So I know everybody's going into that food coma. I'm going to give you some very actionable steps to take so that you can personally

make progress in your back office. So why are scalable system, the ability for your back office systems to handle that easily is important. You may suffer from poor systems in place. If you find yourself manually moving data between systems to get reports and understand where your business is, it's a sign your business back office is not working for you. It's working against you. And growth doesn't necessarily just mean more clients.

it could be additional product lines. It could be growing your team. Now, solopreneurs, it's just as important for you, even if you're not growing your team, you are growing your capacity. Otherwise, as a solopreneur, you will very quickly find out that you have maxed and you can go no further. And you can't be the example of Louise that we saw just a few moments ago. And if your systems are working well for you,

Kathy (: 07:04

You're eliminating the waste in your business. The same number of people can do more. And you're increasing the quality. So your clients are getting consistent experiences each and every time they deal with you. How many of us have worked with a business? We've all done it. The first time was great. The second time you work with them, quality snuck down just a bit. Third time you worked with them, quality fell off the charts. We don't want you to be there.

and these systems are going to ensure you're not. So let's start with pillar one. And for all of you technophobes out there, I named this your relationship hub. For those of you that love your tech, and I realize there's not many of you in the audience, yay for those that are, this is what's known as your client relationship system or your CRM tool. It's probably what you've heard out in the industry. This is the tool that is going to keep all of that information

about where every client is in your process, what you have delivered, what you haven't delivered, and all of those important notes and call information in one place. So I like to say, social media, we all know the rule. If there's not a photo, it didn't happen. Well, I know in my business and I hope in your business, if it's not logged in your CRM tool, it didn't happen. And so you want to ensure you have quality,

records in one place. It's your single source of truth for where you are with your clients. Then it is important for scale and it's important for scale for so many reasons. Some of you are sitting there thinking you're still new in your business. This Excel sheet, this Google sheet, whatever tool you're using, this spreadsheet is giving me everything I need. Your spreadsheet will only get you so far. After that, you're going to need more.

And I would encourage you to set up your CRM tool before you feel the need. Otherwise you will have fits and starts in your business. And I want you to keep in mind, your CRM should be able to handle other things. What products have you sold your clients? What the sales volume is for your clients? How many of you want to know how much every client costs you to do business with? Are you keeping track of that? You might want to know.

Kathy (: 09:29

you might want to consider at some point in your business, this is no longer a quality client for me and the relationship. And most importantly, you want those special touch points with your clients. So those birthdays, those anniversaries, gathering all of those key dates for your clients allows you to maintain it and communicate with them and better yet, even automate some of it. So there are some very specific factors you want to consider for your CRM tool.

And these are what email tools are you using? What calendar tools are you using? How are you creating client proposals? You want to ensure whatever CRM you are using is going to also integrate with those tools in some way, shape or form, and preferably native integration. So let's move to pillar two, and that's your project management. This is how you physically track the delivery of whatever it is you are giving to your client.

That could be a product, that could be a service. It doesn't matter. You still need a project management tool. Now in the early days of your business, this is probably done through task lists. As you grow, your task lists are not going to give easy visibility to your expanding team. You want to hire a VA, now you have to move all of those tasks over to the VA's task list. It's going to be deadly to time and it's once again going to hinder your ability to grow quickly and easily.

So you launch via webinar, you do something and you hit 100 clients in one day. Can your business support it? If your CRM tool and your project management tool aren't in place, 100 clients in any day is going to be very hard for a team to manage. And I want you to consider that as you grow, those delays actually exponentially hit upon you. For every five people you grow in your business,

the amount of work your business team takes on is exponential. Now here are some key factors you want to keep in mind for your project management team. Can you easily see the work that your team has ahead of them so that you can help manage the resources in your back office? If you are someone that charges your clients on an hourly basis, can you track the time for their projects within your project management tool? And more importantly,

Kathy (: 11:56

We're going to talk about finance here shortly. Can that move over to your invoicing system flawlessly? Can you report the status of projects, not just for your internal team, but for your clients at the click of a button? Can you see the profitability of these projects? You want to know all of this to make adequate and informed decision-making within your business. And one last thing to consider if you are doing client work,

Does it give you a client portal? Can you deliver things privately in a secured way to a client or are you sending everything over email? Now that third pillar is financial management. Now you need pillar one and two in your business to gain your clients and get going. But pillar three is going to keep your business operational. If you have no cashflow, you have no business. Or as others like to say, if you have no cashflow, you have a hobby. Now your financial tools,

are going to vary and I call this one pillar often in many client experiences. This is typically not one tool. So you may have invoicing and payment processing in one tool. You might have expense tracking as another. It really depends on the size and complexity of your business. But your financial management pillar needs to handle all four of these things. Can you quickly and easily claim money and send an invoice to a client?

as critical payment thresholds happen on their project. More importantly, if you can send the invoice, can you collect the money from them? Do you have a payment processing system that's going to allow them to pay and in a way they want to pay? If you have expenses and we all have expenses in our business, but if you have teams, it gets a little more complex. How are you managing the expense tracking? And can you easily link that back to the projects that it's associated with? And most importantly,

Can you easily report the status of your finances? Can you look at a P &L monthly to make informed decisions about successful and unsuccessful product lines? Can you move forward or are you stuck spending days creating these financial reports to make informed decisions for your team? This is the Money Center. This is where the magic happens. So some of us love to say we are in business because we have a passion. And I hope you built your business on a passion that you have.

Kathy (: 14:25

But more importantly, it is a hobby if you can't financially be secure in the management of that business. Now, pillar four is where people tend to get scared, and that's the security pillar. And I'm going to once again read you a couple of stats. excuse me while I bring up the piece of paper. Studies show over 248 small businesses have a cyber instant daily.

That's daily folks, almost 250 of us will get hit with some sort of cyber incident. QualSec reports that 43 % of all cyber attacks target small businesses. And of those businesses, those with less than 100 people on their teams have a 250 % higher chance of being targeted. It's staggering. But more importantly, you need to protect yourself.

And there are a number of things in the security realm that you want to do. First and foremost is your data protected? Is the CRM tool, is the financial tool you're using, are they following, especially if they're cloud-based, data protection? If you have localized data, are you protecting that server with the best of integrity? Do you have threat prevention?

Do you have VPNs? Do you have VPNs on phones and tablets and laptops if people are traveling? Are you working on open Wi-Fi networks? Compliance management is going to vary depending on not only your industry, but on your business complexity. Compliance starts for all of us. There are laws we are all subject to as a business. We will file taxes. We will pay quarterly payments. There are things we have to do. But if you are in law,

Excuse me. Health, real estate, there are additional compliance matters that you have. And those of us that are collecting payment information also have payment compliance that we have to be aware of. And are we securely managing the data of those clients? I know for my business early on, I'd take a credit card by phone. Very quickly, my lawyer told me, not a great move, Kathy. Stop doing it.

Kathy (: 16:45

Ensure you have a payment authorization for every time you are collecting payment from your clients. And then the last one I want to talk about is disaster recovery. None of us like to think about it. Earthquakes happen. I moved here to Greenville about three years ago. Shortly after that, Hurricane Helene rolled through. I moved to Greenville because I didn't have to worry about the coastal hurricanes and I had to deal with a hurricane. My house was without power for five days.

Could I work? Very little, but I could. I had my data. I had the ability to connect my laptop through my phone so long as I could keep those devices charged. So I could function. Wasn't optimally, but I could. How are you going to recover? And more importantly, if you're using cloud services, do you have a localized backup that on a daily basis you could function for a day if that cloud solution is offline?

Do you know how to pick up the phone? Do you have a phone number locally stored to your laptop or your phone to call a client? Most of us have them in our phones, but we don't think about it. Do you have a name or do you just see the number and it pulls up the name automatically? You need to think through these things. And you have to be diligent because your clients are going to ask you when you're collecting critical, privileged information from them. GDPR.

You're collecting all that personally identifiable data. How are you housing it? What are you doing to manage it? So you have to keep pillar four in mind. And then pillar five, this is really important. And it shows how are we communicating with the people outside our walls? So this is not team communication. This is keeping your clients aware of what's going on. Do you have a way to send an email? Do you have a way?

to track their information? Do you have a website? Can you be found online and do you have a way to communicate with others to ensure you have a steady flow of clients? There's a lot of crowded spaces that we all work in. How are you using your external communications pillar to differentiate you from the competition? And then here, as you're looking at factors, you really wanna consider the ease of use with these tools.

Kathy (: 19:05

Can you very quickly put together a newsletter or a critical update to clients? Do you have wants versus needs? And what is most important for your business right now today? And understand as your business grows, the subscriptions for this pillar in particular is probably going to increase. So now I talked a little bit about those five pillars and these other pillars, these are as you grow your team. So many of these things you don't need to think about it first if you're a solo

or you only have like one person on your team, it's a little easier, but you are, as you grow your team, going to want to think about internal communication. And are you going to use Slack versus Google Chat versus whatever tool? Centralized storage, can everyone access all of the appropriate client files and information and integration of all of that together? How nicely are these tools going to play with one another in your company's universe? And again,

As your team grows, this pillar becomes more and more important. Now, I love tech. I think everybody needs tech in their back office, but I do want to give some words of caution. And this is really where your growth mindset is going to play in. I want you to always consider your process first. How do you do business and how do you want to do business over the course of things before you choose your tech?

Your tech should allow that process to happen seamlessly. It should not need to be pasted and posted together. And so you want to think about that process first and tech second. But I also don't want you to be short-sighted. I want you to think one to three years ahead for the growth of your business. Where do you see your business going? This is going to include team members, client base. This is also going to include product lines.

And you want to consider that because as you're evaluating the tech, you may not need to pay for a subscription that is two tiers more with a product. But knowing that that two tiers can happen when you're ready to add that product line a year from now is important. And so you want to choose your tech with that one to three year vision. And then lastly, I want you to prioritize integration among those tools.

Kathy (: 21:32

There are great tools to help you use API calls. And that's just a fancy way to say data is transferred between tools nicely. But I want you to consider tools first and foremost that are either already a one size fits all or the integrate natively. It's just going to make things so much easier. And I will tell you those tools that connect things, they tend to get very expensive as your business grows and the complexity of that data and you have to share groups.

So I told you I'd share some next steps with you. And that is assessing your foundation. So I have this great tool, it's called the system synergy scorecard, and it allows you to evaluate those five pillars for your back office. You can literally do it in five to 10 minutes. If it takes you more than that, I you to stop and think. These are 25, five questions for each pillar, yes or no questions for that pillar of your back office.

If you're stuck and you're like, well, it kind of does this, it might do that. I want you to decide is kind of yes, that's good enough or is that a no and score appropriately. And that is going to help you identify your next steps. That's going to tell you gaps and really help you give you a true now you need to do this. And then you're going to build the roadmap. And that could be evaluating some new check tools.

And more importantly, I want you to have some support in that. So you also have here my website, and through my website, you can schedule a free strategy call, and I would be happy to discuss your particular situation and what those appropriate next steps might be.

This was so good, Kathy. Everybody's like popping in some questions around CRMs and all the things I know firsthand from being hacked as a digital company, how important cybersecurity is. Most of us don't prioritize it till we've had the rug ripped out from under us. It will happen to you. It's just a matter of time. it's

Kathy (: 23:40

of time and how severe it when it happens. If you protect yourself, that breach could be a whole lot less.

So, you know, I highly encourage all of you, if you've not taken precautions yet, you should. And so really, really powerful. Kathy, thank you so much. You Kathy is not only in our mastermind, she's such a zone of genius in the tech space. She's also doing some peer coaching inside of our business coaching program. So really, really appreciate everything that you put out here today, especially.

for the visionaries out there and the founders like me whose brains don't operate this way. Again, my CIO is not on the call right now, but I often say I wouldn't have gone an eighth of the distance I've gone in the last almost eight years if it wasn't for the backend operations and tech support. And so for some of you, if you're feeling bottlenecked or you're feeling like what Kathy was talking about is a little bit foreign,

you may be bottlenecking your growth right now. And I highly encourage you to reach out. Kathy gave you her QR code. She's just brilliant in that space. I believe in synergies in business. know Erin kicked off as a COO. We talked about that right-hand person in business. I think it's really important as a founder and a visionary to know what your blind spots are that may be keeping you from excelling even further. So.

Kathy, thank you so much for sharing this information. I'm not gonna let you off the hook though, without talking about how you embody living in, you know, the elevate, the full 360 approach. You know, we talk about bodies build businesses. We also have business strategy and creating this impact, not only instantly and immediately, but through legacy. Where do you feel like you're, you know, embodying and living?

Melissa (: 25:37

this 360 degree approach to life and business.

Yeah, so it is really a great question. And for years I have been the problem solver, put your big girl panties on and just get it done. And I have done everything possible this year to, and I'm not going to say break the habit, but to make the habit serve me better. And that includes recognizing when I need more. And just recently had a health scare with my dog and we're dealing with some things.

and came back and because I have been intentional with my business this year and because I have chosen clients that have empathy, I was able to come back from a vet visit and really tell my clients, my head's not here today. Explain what was going on and just take the long weekend. It was a Friday. I had come home from the vet. You could tell if you saw me on a call, I was a disaster. And really, but those clients showed empathy with me because I opened up and I never would have done that before.

hold the big girl panties up and plug through the day. And so that has really taught me a whole lot, know, bringing meditation practices into my day to start my day before the feet hit the floor, thinking through what I want to be grateful for that day, what I'm seeking in that day. And those are things I didn't have experience with growing up. And I haven't had experience with my entire corporate career.

And so really just learning to focus on those because it really does serve my clients better. It serves me better and learning how to set those boundaries.

Melissa (: 27:21

Yeah, love this. And it's the human experience, right? We can't separate ourselves from our business. Our businesses are like an organism, all of themselves, they're birthed from us and run by us, right? And so I love how you've been able to navigate that space and create really great connections and relationships with premium clients, ideal clients who are compassionate also and understand the human experience that there are days that are gonna be down, but you'll pick yourself back up. So thank you so much.