The first step in creating a business that runs on systems and automation is to identify the roles in your business. This is a key exercise for Range of Motion Business Mentoring clients.

Think of the roles as the different ‘hats’ you have to wear in the day to day running and operations of your business.

Another great way to identify these roles is to imagine you’re hiring employees to complete the tasks in the business. What employees would you hire? What would be their areas of speciality?

The benefit of this thought experiment is two-fold:

• It makes your business scaleable: By identifying the future employees you might bring on board, you’re able to build your business with a strong focus on the future, which is a great way to set the wheels in motion for business growth (if that’s what you want). If and when you do bring in outside help, the systems and processes are already in place to allow that employee to carry out their role with efficiency and effectiveness. Incidentally, this is also a great way to make sure you’re comfortable with delegation. Delegation can often be difficult for a business owner, as they can perceive that no one else can perform the role to the level they demand of themselves. Well developed systems can effectively ‘transplant’ the actions and behaviours of the business owner into someone else, thus creating a copy of that role, rather than having to build a new one.
• It gives you an exit strategy: Regardless of your long-term plan for your business, having roles identified gives you the freedom to delegate and outsource more and more of your business.

The common theme with both of these benefits of role-identification is that although they both assume some future-plan, they actually help to streamline your business operations now, today.

Let’s explore some examples of roles you may identify in your business:

• CEO/Director/Owner
• Personal Trainer
• Group Fitness Instructor
• Exercise Programmer
• Nutritional Specialist
• Sales manager
• Customer Care
• Administration
• Accountant
• Content Creator
• Content Scheduler
• Graphic Designer
• Cleaner

The next step is to write a one sentence job description for each role that clearly defines what that role encompasses. Imagine you’re writing a job description for a job advert. Of course, you may not be at the stage where you’re looking to hire, but one day you might be, and in the meantime, it will allow you to clearly define each of the roles you’re having to play.

Once you have you list of roles, define the qualities of each role. Again, using our ‘job advert’ thought experiment, these are the qualities or ‘key competencies’ that that role requires. Maybe the role of ‘cleaner’ requires a good eye for detail, a degree of perfectionism and a willingness to work alone. The role of ‘Personal Trainer’ the other hand may still require a good eye for detail, but may differ in that it also requires an outgoing personality and high levels of enthusiasm.

Of course, this process is hugely beneficial when it comes to hiring, but in the meantime, identifying the key competencies of each role will allow you to intentionally shift between the roles as the day-to-day operations of the business demand. Over the space of one day, it’s not uncommon to complete 10+ different roles, wearing 10+ different hats. The description of the roles as ‘wearing different hats’ can be a useful analogy. As you shift between different roles, imagine you’re changing hats, taking the ‘cleaner’ hat off and putting the ‘Personal Trainer’ hat on. As you change hats, it’s almost like your changing personalities, assuming the key competencies and qualities that make each role a success. In this way, your maximising your abilities to complete each role (and the tasks contained with it) in a way that will maximise the big-picture success of the business.

It’s useful to revisit the concept of using these roles to scale the business. As you get to the stage where you’re able to hire staff (or delegate the roles), begin by delegating your low value roles. We can define our low value roles in two ways:

1. The roles that are least in need of your expertise (or that you have little to no expertise in).
2. The roles pay the lowest hourly rate.

To go back to one of our examples, the role of ‘cleaner’ can be designated as a low value role by both our metrics, it doesn’t require your expertise, and you can outsource it at a low hourly rate. If you pay a cleaner $30 an hour, but can earn $100 in that same hour playing the role of a Personal Trainer, bringing an outside cleaner on board will give your business at $70/hour net gain.

Creating roles will eventually allow you to identify tasks for each role, and create systems and automation for those tasks.

So you’ve identified your roles, described them, and listed the key competencies of each.

What’s next? Well, the next step, is in taking these roles, and identifying the tasks each completes (which we’ll cover in part six of this series), and from there, systemising each task (part seven of this series).