The Day I Realised My Systems Were Running the Show (And Not Me)
It started with a cuppa.
Not one of those lukewarm, reheat-it-twice kinds.
An actual hot cup of tea. Sat down. No laptop. No guilt.
Just quiet, stillness, and a moment to think.
And the wild part?
The world didn’t fall apart while I took 20 minutes off.
A year or two earlier, that would’ve felt impossible.
Back then, I was the glue holding everything together.
Client onboarding? Manual.
Invoices? Sent when I remembered.
Emails? Oh, we don’t talk about those.
I was constantly catching up, constantly “just about coping”, and always thinking I should be doing more.
The idea that my business could run without me hovering over it felt… laughable.
But then I started making small changes.
Not a total overhaul. Just tweaks.
A client welcome sequence that sent itself
A folder where everything actually lived (and I could find it again!)
Checklists so I didn’t have to remember it all
Nothing fancy. Nothing perfect. Just systems that worked for me, not ones I had to wrestle into place.
And slowly, I realised something.
The systems had started to hold the business – not me.
That’s what systems do at their best.
They don’t make your business robotic.
They make it lighter.
They don’t replace you.
They give you space to actually be you – the CEO, the creative, the person who wanted to do this in the first place.
And that’s how I found myself, cuppa in hand, not doing anything “productive”.
No guilt. No panic. Just ease.
Because I’d built a business that didn’t collapse the second I took a breather.
If you’re reading this and thinking,
“I want that… but my backend is a mess,”
Just know – that’s exactly where most of my clients start.
And that’s OK.
You don’t need a perfect system.
You just need a starting point.
Want someone to help you build that breathing room?
I offer one-off sorting sessions and VIP Days to set up the systems that quietly hold your business together – so you don’t have to.
