How to Create Systems for Your Poshmark Business
When you’re running a business, you may get frazzled thinking about everything you need to do to keep your business running and thriving. It’s easy to find your time eaten up by little day-to-day tasks or urgent things that come up.
Do you ever find yourself feeling short on time? I know I do!
I have two side hustles of selling online and blogging. Both have many tasks required of them to run well.
A strategy I’ve found to help manage my time better is to use systems.
In this post, I want to cover
what systems are
how systems can benefit your business
examples of systems so that you can use them too
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***If you don’t have a Poshmark account, you can receive a free $10 bonus when you sign up with my code SFGIRL2015. Amount varies by promotion.***
What are systems?
Systems are the specific steps required to complete a process in your business.
That sounds technical, but it’s really not. Other words you may have heard for it are routines, sequences, and habits.
They’re step-by-step processes that you can follow to get something done more easily. You probably already have some in place in your life without being aware of it.
When you cook your favorite recipe, you know the steps by heart and follow them without even thinking about them. That’s already one system in place.
Why create systems?
Systems help your business in many ways:
Streamline your work to do more in less time resulting in greater productivity.
Work more easily on things that matter to your business, not little tasks that get you nowhere.
Recognize problems or inefficiencies of your current methods so that you can improve them.
Lessen your mental stress and create more calm around business processes.
At first, this sounds amazing but also like a pain to take the time to create systems. It does take time to set them up.
But it pays off in the long run. Your business will running more efficiently going forward.
How to create systems
1 | Take yourself through a week
The first step is to review your week.
Write down every task that you do each day for your business.
This will look different for each person depending on your business.
Example: These are some common tasks for sellers.
Sourcing inventory
Cleaning and repairing inventory
Taking pictures of items to list online
Tracking income and expenses
Example: These are some common tasks for bloggers.
Respond to emails
Respond to blog post comments
Write new posts
Post new content to a Facebook group
There are a lot more tasks that both sellers and bloggers to do. I did this exercise for both of my side hustles.
I was surprised at how many things I had to do for each of them. You’ll likely find that you’re doing a lot more for your business than you realize.
I started by going through the average week because that would I would cover most of the tasks I do for my businesses in a week.
You may have things that you do monthly or yearly though.
That could be tallying up your income and expenses or reaching out to potential sponsors once a month. Don’t forget to add those to the list.
2 | Take note of your routines
It’s easiest to make systems of the tasks you do repetitively.
Look at your list and highlight the things you do most frequently.
Example: Routine tasks for sellers.
Taking measurements of items
Writing item descriptions
Sharing your listings on Poshmark
Example: Routine tasks for bloggers.
Scheduling pins to Tailwind for Pinterest
Writing new content for blog posts
Creating a project or recipe for craft and food bloggers
Managing email
3 | Write down your processes
The next thing to do is write down every steps for every process of your business.
Write out the steps for them in order so you see exactly what you do.
Think of this as creating a manual or guidebook for your business.
The additional benefit of this is that now anyone can do the process by reading the manual.
If you’re a solo entrepreneur, you can get difficult to manage every aspect of your business by yourself. When you decide to hire someone to help you, the person will be able to look at the process in writing to do it.
This can help when you’re sick too and have someone like a family member or partner helping you get your tasks done for a day.
You’ll already have systems in place for your business. You’ll need less time to train anyone you hire or anyone who helps you.
Example: Sharing listings on Poshmark is time-consuming but beneficial to sales. Here’s a process for it.
1) Designate 30 minutes a day to sharing listings. A schedule could be 3 times a day for 10 minutes each around breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2) Use the device that shares the quickest such as a computer or tablet instead of a phone. Have a stylus in hand as well.
3) Share 100 of your own listings to your followers or a party. Share 100 items from other people’s closets.
4) If you don’t have 100 items, share your own items again until you reach 100 shares for yourself.
Example: Email tends to be where many people lose time in their day without gaining much productive from it. A system could help cut down the amount of time spent handling email.
1) Designate time to look at your emails such as first thing in the morning.
2) Skim the subject lines of your emails.
3) Instantly delete or unsubscribe from the ones that are spam or irrelevant to you.
4) Read the emails that don’t require a response and delete them or move them to the appropriate folder.
5) Reply to the rest of the emails, what should be the most urgent or relevant ones you’ve received.
6) File those emails so they’re out of your inbox.
4 | Audit your processes
As you move through the days and weeks using your systems, think about what you can do to improve them.
What can you cut back on or eliminate? Maybe some things take too much time or are too many steps. Or you find some tasks you don’t want to do at all.
The improvements don’t have to be much. See if you can automate the tasks, hire help, delegate those tasks away, or just get rid of them.
There’s the option to hire virtual assistants to share your Poshmark listings or cut through your email for you. The can do just about anything online nowadays, although it does cost money to hire a VA.
Example: The online seller may want to work on increasing packaging speed.
Use preprinted thank you notes, stickers, or business cards instead of handwriting notes.
Use a printer that prints multiple shipping labels at once and adhesive shipping labels to save time on sticking them to packages.
Ship once a day or once every other day to reduce the number of trips to the post office.
Example: The blogger working on managing email can implement additional strategies.
Spend only a set amount of time on each relevant email, such as 2 minutes per email before moving on.
Create standard pre-written templates that can be copied and pasted as replies.
Create or use keyboard shortcuts to make responding faster.
Decide to talk on the phone if you know communication will require several email exchanges.
After implementing systems in your business or even other areas of your life, you’ll likely find that you get more done in less time. That’s a benefit all around.
Have you implemented systems in your business? What systems improved your business?
