Balancing business personality with systems

Lisa will hate me for writing this.

You might not know her, she’s the person who publishes the content on the company LinkedIn page and sometimes replies to emails for me when I’m ridiculously busy.

She dropped me a message a few days back saying we needed another ‘Beyond Bonjour’ article for the website and, of course, she was right.

The thing is, since starting the business I’ve run it as a small operation instead of a large organisation, usually undertaking marketing activity as I feel like it, rather ad-hoc, as opposed to it being structured and following a plan.

Which is how you might say a ‘proper’ business should be run.

But when I’m given a marketing plan it suddenly feels a touch mechanical, like I’m creating something because that’s what the plan says, not because I’m super-excited to talk about that thing today.

Which means it loses some of my personality.

I’m doing the same thing now.

I sat down to write a new article and this is it.

• It’s not about video testimonials
• It’s not about podcatsing for school marketing
• It’s not about school marketing videos

Instead it’s me writing what I feel like writing. Which is kind of what this section was intentionally designed for; a place where I could write anything that jumped into my head.

So when I looked at the last few articles and noticed there was a flurry in late-January but then nothing in February or most of March something inside me actually thought what most of us would probably think in that situation; that we need to change some previous dates so it doesn’t look sporadic.

Because sporadic is seen as a bad thing in the business.

Systems are good.

But systems, while essential for business growth, naturally steal from the personality of the founder.

I think I need to get over this.

I think we need more systems.

So why will Lisa hate me for writing this? Because there’s nothing she can strip out from it to share on the LinkedIn company page.

Have a great week 😁

Simon Jones