E-Myth, Franchising, An Help with Business Systems

[TrendSettersInc]

Hey Everyone,

So I recently been reading about the book E-Myth revisited by Micheal Gerber An I'm sure many of you are familiar with it. It talks of working ON your business and not IN it and setting it up from the beginning as a mature company that could possibly be replicated, even if you don't want to franchise/replicate it.

Well Im building upon my ecommerce site and its in the apparel/fashion industry. It is for a specific niche now and a lot of it is changing with the new site we are planning to launch spring/summer.

Now for the past few months I've been trying to come up with systems and processes for each area and Im a bit confused on it.

I have a system for 3 Areas being its an online business and will eventually consist of a warehouse.

1. Administration
2. Production
3. Marketing

Each of these are broken down further with different processes for specific systems in each category, ie like "online order fulfillment" step by step guides, Marketing for social networks, Email newsletters ect.(all step by step and possibly going to be color coordinated to depending on which 3 areas they will be in to help employees)

Where Im lost is this, first I should keep it as simple as possible and with the least amount of touch points, Correct? I want to mainly have about 3 people in place. 1 for the vision of the brand, a marketing person and my artist who is more the technician.

Also are there any resources online, apps or books that anyone knows of for setting up systems for a clothing line, or ecommerce site for products.

I want to keep it simple, but I've been working at it for awhile and I just would like some outside feedback or someone with experience input.

Thanks

 

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[H. Palmer]

My guess is you are making it too complicated already.

You've read the E-Myth (which I'm currently re-reading btw), but I would suggest you read some work from Tim Ferriss too and watch videos with Noah Kagan (AppSumo).

If you're starting out or in any situation where your business is not in a mature stage, it's not advisable to build or purchase very specialized systems.

My advise it to gather metrics first. Then create some custom made systems and implement some custom made scripts for several activities.
Custom made stuff enables you to go with the market.

Once you understand the dynamics of the market more precisely and you have your key people in place, then you can freeze it so that it becomes a hands off business.

 

[TrendSettersInc]

Thanks,

I watched the Tim Ferris and Noah Kagan interview a few weeks ago and that was helpful. Ive mainly been looking at the main parts and trying to break them down so there are easy processes to follow.

Our workflow has grown and will most likely grow with the marketing and new products coming this spring so I just want to make it easier.

I guess sometimes making it easy we can tend to complicate things more than needed.