How Better Systems Help Solopreneurs Make More Money

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

What if the reason you’re not making more money has nothing to do with your marketing, your offers, or how hard you’re working, and everything to do with your task management system? I know that might sound a little backwards, like what the heck does a task management system have to do with revenue? But by the end of this episode, you’re going to see exactly how the two are connected and why fixing one could change the other.

Let’s get into it

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey. Welcome back. Today, we’re getting into something I believe every solopreneur needs to hear. We’re talking about task management systems and how they’re directly connected to your revenue. So by the end of this episode, you’re going to understand why setting up your system isn’t just an admin task for when you’re, quote-unquote, bigger or making more money.

It’s actually the best money move you can make right now, regardless of how far off you are in business. But before we get into it, I wanted to tell you about Taskflow Magic. It’s my program for solopreneurs who are ready to stop winging it and start running their business with a task management system that actually supports their goals.

And I want you to hear from Susan, one of my students, who said that after going through Taskflow Magic, she completed two guidebooks and developed two courses that are now available in her store. So listen, she couldn’t get a process down before, but now they’re complete, and she’s still… and she now has a solid project list for the rest of the year.

And this is truly the power of a task management system, which is what we’re covering today. Because listen, had she never completed those guidebooks or those courses, how was she going to make money from them? You can’t. You can’t. So we’re gonna get into all of that today. But if you want to learn more about Taskflow Magic, then head to cheerstoproductivity.com/taskflow or check out the link in the show notes.

All right. Now, let’s get into it. So I wanna tell you a story about last Black Friday where I didn’t have my task flows ready for a new promotional campaign that I was running. Like, it was something that I hadn’t done before, and therefore, I didn’t have the systems in place for it. And so Black Friday, you know, there’s always…

it, it’s always a huge hype. There’s always something going on. Um, I’m always running a new promotion. Like, for some reason, I can’t just do the same thing every year. Like, I don’t know why. I don’t know why because that just means that I have to recreate a system almost every single year, and it feels like starting from a blank slate every single time.

So last year, the overwhelm hit me so hard. Like, I decided to do one of the craziest, biggest, most work um, campaigns I’ve ever done, so there were so many moving pieces and it felt like I would never be able to do it and much less in the month of. Like, I didn’t decide my Black Friday sale until November Uh, yeah, I wouldn’t recommend that.

But um, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t know what I needed to get done, it’s just that nothing, there was no system. I, it was all in my head. I knew the sale that I wanted to run. I had the idea, but I didn’t have the system yet for it, and so I didn’t actually know how big of a project it would be. But all of that changed when I finally stopped trying to keep it in my head, and I just took the time to build the Taskflow system for it.

Okay? So I mapped out every single step. I put everything on in this Trello board. I use Trello as my tool, but the tool isn’t as important as the way that you’re creating the system, side note. But I mapped everything out in Trello, and then thankfully, it finally felt doable instead of, like, this impossible task I was not going to get done, especially because I had less than a month to do it.

So yeah, even though it was a lot, and I had about three weeks to get it done, the task management system definitely helped me actually get through all of it. And if you were in my world at last Live Friday, then you might have an idea of, like, whoa, that feels like it would’ve been a lot of work. So what is a task management system?

Well, it’s not a fancy app or a tool, and it’s not a complicated setup. The tool doesn’t matter so much as the way that it is created. Okay? A task management system is simply knowing what needs to get done and having a place for it to live. Like, that is probably the simplest explanation I can give it.

Without this type of system, everything is going to live in your head. In your head, your brain is not a very reliable system because think about it, you have so many other thoughts going on in your head. You have so much. There’s so much going on, not just in your business, but in your personal life, at your job, with your family.

Like, so much is going on in your head all of the time. “What time do I need to make dinner? Oh, I forgot, I need to add this to the grocery list. Oh, I need to make sure that I’m there for that meeting. Oh, I need to add that meeting to my calendar.” Like there is so much going on in your head, so we cannot rely on our own brain.

We need somewhere, a place for everything to live, and that is where your task management system comes in.

And here is how it keeps your marketing consistent because yes, we do need to market ourselves. We do need to make sure that our offers, that we are visible, and that we’re getting, um, as many eyes as we can, as many as the right eyes as we can on our products, our offers, our services, our website, our social media content, our podcast episode, all of the things.

So marketing is what gets your eyes on your offers. If you don’t market, then yeah, you don’t… It’s harder to make money. But a task management system is the system, it’s the mechanism behind your marketing. It’s what makes sure that your podcast episode actually gets recorded. It’s what helps you make sure that you’re not missing any single step when you’re writing the blog post.

It’s what helps you keep track of everything. Like I said earlier, Susan, it’s what helped her actually get her guidebooks and her courses out to the world so she could sell it. And when you sell something, you make money from it, right? So consistency in marketing means you’re consistent in visibility, which helps you bring in revenue more consistently, right?

And so wouldn’t you want a thing, a system, that helps you stay consistent with those things because it will technically help you make money? Yeah, I do. Like, I do. Okay? But you don’t have to do everything either. But whatever you do, ’cause that’s a whole different discussion, but whatever you do need to do, whatever tasks do belong to you, it needs a system behind it.

So here is how it can help you actually finish and launch your offers. Because creating an offer isn’t just one task. This is a mistake that I see a lot of people make, is like they’re, “Oh, I just need to create a course. Oh, I just need to write a, you know, create a Instagram reel. I just need to X, Y, Z. I just need to record a podcast episode.

How hard can it be? All I need to do is literally grab my mic and hit record.” Um, yeah, no. My Taskflow, my podcast episode workflow has several steps, dozens of steps. So creating an offer that you want to make money with is not just one task. It’s more than 20. There’s a sales page that has its own set of little bite-sized tasks.

There’s a checkout page. How do you deliver the offer? The emails, the post-purchase emails, right? When someone buys the offer, you need to create the graphics. Like, every single little step needs somewhere to live. Each little step doesn’t just take two minutes. Creating a sales page has a lot of steps.

Some of the steps will take you longer than others, right? Like writing the sales page copy. I mean, yeah, we have AI now, which can help speed up the process, but you still have to really know your offer. There’s a lot still that goes into place with writing a sales page. Even if you’re using AI to help you with it, there are still very specific steps that need to be followed.

And without a system, your offer just sits in the in progress status, indefinitely, because you just don’t even know what you need to have done. And when you don’t know, you get overwhelmed. That is a big part of where the overwhelm comes from. And when you don’t finish an offer, it makes $0. Sure, you can run a pre-sale for it, but then those customers are gonna want their offer.

So an unfinished offer makes zero sales. So here is the point that I want to get across today. Money, the revenue, doesn’t come first. The system does, okay? And I, and I’ve seen this so often, and honestly, it gets so frustrating, ’cause it’s like I want you to make more money. I want that for you. But they’re waiting.

They’re waiting to feel ready, or they’re waiting for their revenue to hit a certain vanity number before they, quote-unquote, “get organized.” But I want to kind of s- let’s change the thoughts here a little bit because operating at the level of the income that you want means that you should be supporting or building a system that is going to help you get to that level first, right?

Like, uh, let’s, let’s think about this a little bit differently. When you’re trying to reach, you know, let’s say 100 figures because that is the big, big number that so many people are striving for. Maybe it’s just 1,000 a month, maybe it’s 200 a month. Like, the amount doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you want to reach that level, whatever…

Like, think about a number right now in your head that you want to reach. Think about it. How is someone who’s making that much revenue, how do you think they are operating? Do you think they’re kind of winging it? Do you think that they have systems in place? If you think that they have systems in place, you should create the systems to help you get to that place, too.

It’s kind of like a little bit of manifestation, right? But also It’s stewardship. It’s stewardship, which is to take care of what’s already in your hands. Because what if, here’s a what if, like when I was thinking about this episode and I was like really trying to figure out like how can I get this point across in a way that maybe I haven’t done before, this verse came to mind.

Matthew 25:29, “To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given and they will have an abundance. But those fr- but from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” Now listen, the way that I took this verse to really see how it related to the message that I’m trying to get at today is we are being entrusted with what we currently have.

And this was a message for myself too, y’all. Like, I also have a revenue number that I want to reach, and I too have to sometimes really push myself to create those systems because it does take time away from those, quote-unquote, “money-making tasks.” And I started looking at things differently recently. I started thinking, “Okay, how do I use well what I have been given?”

Like, I have a ton of content. I have a ton of offers. I have a ton of members in my community. I have a ton of email subscribers. How can I steward them better? How can I expect to be given more if I’m not stewarding the ones that I have the best that I possibly can? Like, this is a question that I have been asking myself.

This is a question that kind of led to all of the updating of my offers and really updating of my systems and really trying to make sure that my communities are completely aligned and really trying to get my content back out there. Like, I haven’t been on social media in a long, long time, I think since the beginning of the year, and even then I was already starting to die down.

But most recently I’ve been feeling called to like maybe I should post on social media again. And so I’m starting small, but it kinda came from this concept of am I stewarding in this situation the content that I have well? Like, I have 130-plus episodes that are still good, that are still valuable. Am I really getting it to people?

Am I really helping people listen to it? Am I really pro- you know, kind of what I said earlier, am I really being consistent in my marketing to get people to listen to the podcast? Which I have a podcast because I have a message to share. I have a mission that I’m trying to work on, you know? I want to genuinely help solopreneurs- live a peaceful life and just being able to enjoy the families that they have and not feel so stressed out all the time.

And I know that systems is one way to do that. So for myself, I had to go back again and, like, update my systems and create new systems for the offers that I was updating to make sure it’s still efficient for me, ’cause I still need it to be efficient, right? Because yes, I do still need to market. I still n- do need to do those tasks.

I still have the same amount of time every day. I still have my same circumstances. But how can I make myself more efficient so that I’m consistent, so that I am stewarding what I already have better? And for me, the, the answer was ultimately I need better systems. I need better systems so that I can steward what I already have better and be more efficient at it, and I can market more, and I can re- if I can market more, I can reach more of the right people.

I can get people into my world. I can work on more collaborations So maybe you’re not being asked to do more. Actually, you’re not being asked to do more. You’re being asked to steward what’s already there. We’re always all being asked to steward what we already have, and a task management system really helps you do that in a practical, efficient way every single day.

So here’s what I want you to leave with here today. You don’t need a new offer. You don’t need more hours. You don’t need to hustle harder, or you don’t even need to show up on another platform. Like, my examples are my examples. They may not be your examples. But what you do need is a system that makes sure that what you’re doing, what you’re already doing, or what you want to do actually gets done.

And this is not just because I’m a systems person. Like, I… If you go to other people, other podcast episodes, other niches, other people who are not productivity or systems strategists, and you ask them or you listen to their episodes on, like, what has helped you reach 100K figures or whatever, you know, what has helped you reach six figures?

What do you contribute to your success? And the majority of the episodes that I have listened to contribute systems to a big key to their success. Yes, their marketing. Yes, everything else. But they all mention systems, which means what? We cannot get there without systems. They don’t have to be perfect, but you need to have them.

Your marketing, your offers, your content, you already have that. It’s already there. You’re already… You’ve been asked to steward it already. The missing piece is a task management system that keeps moving forward, that keeps all of it moving forward consistently week after week without it living in your head and getting into the right hands, the right hands who will know that you have something that they need, and they will pay you for it.

That is how we make more money. That is how better systems helps us solopreneurs, any entrepreneur, any business owner, make more money. And that is exactly what Taskflow Magic is for. It’s going to give you the task management system your business needs so that nothing that matters gets dropped. Not your launch, not your content, not the offers that’s been sitting there at 80% done for the past three months.

So if this episode hit home for you, then Taskflow Magic is your next step. Head to cheerstoproductivity.com/taskflow, and let’s get your system in place, friend. I really genuinely want you to get this system in place so that you can make more money and feel less stress. Like, that is what this is going, is going to help you with.

So the link is also in the show notes, and I’m gonna wrap it up here for today. So I will see you in the next one

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.